If Wishes Were Horsemen
by San Antonio Rose
Summary: Crowley was expecting two hunters backed by a cripple. Instead he got two Tok'ra backed by the best minds in two galaxies. Oops. (AU SPN/SG-1/SGA crossover with SGU cameos, sequel to "Snakeheads"; spoilers for SPN 5.20-21)
1. Heffalumps and Woozles

**NB:** This is the second part of my Tok'ra Apocalypse trilogy. Please read "Snakeheads" before beginning this one.

**Warnings:** This story is AU for both _Supernatural_ and _Stargate__ SG-1_/_Stargate__ Atlantis_. Spoilers for _Supernatural_ "The Devil You Know," "Two Minutes to Midnight," and all previous episodes of Season 5; there will be some lines from both episodes incorporated, but well within fair use. (I chose the title before "The Devil You Know" aired—at least, the phrase came to mind and stuck—so it's not a deliberate reference to a certain part of the canon story arc, but man, if it doesn't fit!) There are also references to SGA "Critical Mass," "Tao of Rodney," "The Seer," "The Shrine," "First Contact," and "Infection" and SPN "Croatoan," "Mystery Spot," "In the Beginning," and part of the Season 4 storyline.

**Setting:** Late April 2010—this 'verse's version of _Supernatural_ "The Devil You Know" and "Two Minutes to Midnight," post-_Stargate__: Extinction_ and maybe Season 2-ish for _Stargate__ Universe_

**A/N:** Oversimplified, but just to avoid confusion: SGA Wraith [sic] are human-bug hybrids that suck humans' life force from their hearts through a feeding slit on the right palm; SPN wraiths [sic] are supernatural creatures that appear human (except in a mirror) and suck humans' brains dry through a retractable spine in the right wrist. Both can cause visual hallucinations. Neither is synonymous with Nazgûl. Todd is a Wraith, not a wraith. Also: I'll use "Sam" for Sam Winchester and "Carter" for Sam Carter except in unambiguous direct address.

Many thanks to my darling beta Ansostuff!

* * *

If Wishes Were Horsemen  
By San Antonio Rose

Chapter 1  
Heffalumps and Woozles

On the outskirts of a lonely Nevada town in the grey light of dawn, Sam and Dean Winchester had stopped to change into their suits at a convenience store and were on their way back out to the car when Dean's cell phone rang. At least, the ringtone came from his pocket. He didn't recall setting any of the numbers in his address book to ring with "Pretty Little Angel Eyes."

"Gabriel," Sam said instinctively.

Dean rolled his eyes and answered the phone.

"Dean!" came the obnoxiously cheerful archangel's voice. "How are the snakes?"

Dean sighed, made sure the parking lot was empty, and let his Tok'ra symbiote reply. "We are all well, thank you, Gabriel."

"Oh! Hey, Dishon, good to hear from you. I really need to talk to Dean, though."

"I am not certain he wishes to speak to you."

"He never does. But I've got important news."

"One moment, then." Dishon retreated, and Dean snapped, "What?"

"I found Castiel."

Dean's annoyance fled instantly at the mention of their lost angel friend. "Cas? Where? How is he? Is he okay?"

"Tulane Medical Center, unconscious, and no. That dumb stunt in Van Nuys really did a number on him; his grace is almost gone. The doctors tell me he appeared on a shrimping boat off Delacroix. They think he's brain dead, but his being a John Doe and not having a living will kept the administrators from pulling the plug long enough for me to get here and play the next-of-kin card. He's physically stable otherwise, and I'll do what I can for his grace, but... we may be here a while. I'm still not 100% myself, and it's not like the SGC docs could do much more for him."

Dean sighed. "Okay. We're still chasin' Pestilence across western Nevada. When Cas wakes up, call us and take him to Bobby's. We'll get there as soon as we can."

"I'll bring you some jambalaya," Gabriel promised and hung up.

"Cas?" Sam asked.

Dean repeated what Gabriel had told him.

Sam swore. "I don't think that healing device works on angels."

"Gabriel's there," Dean shrugged as they got into the Impala. "And we're here, almost two thousand miles away, and we need to catch Pestilence before the Croatoan virus gets loose."

"Fair enough," Sam conceded unhappily.

Dean's head bobbed, and Dishon added, "Dean is worried, too, Sam. But we cannot abandon this mission to keep vigil with Gabriel. It would be worse for both of you to sit idle there when you know there is work to be done here."

Sam nodded. "Salim's thinkin' the same thing. Guess you're all right." He sighed. "Okay. Let's go check out this flu outbreak."

Dishon returned control to Dean, who nodded once and started the car.

* * *

Something was up with the Winchesters. That was all that the British crossroads demon known as Crowley could conclude with any certainty. Something had happened to Sam and Dean that night at the Elysian Fields Hotel during the so-called summit of the gods, while he'd been dodging a roving band of daevas and couldn't monitor his supernatural bug in the Impala, that had left them with what seemed to be either multiple personality disorder or the strangest case of possession he'd ever encountered. It was that conclusion as much as their dubious scheme to force Lucifer back into Hell, assuming he'd pieced together the clues correctly, that made him decide to contact them that night when they passed close enough to his Nevada hideout in their search for Pestilence. But so far he'd seen nothing to explain what he'd been hearing—not until he brought the boys back to his lair and made his pitch regarding the hunt for the Horsemen's rings:

"I want in."

A lightning-quick head bob, and Sam's green-hazel eyes suddenly glowed briefly. It was all Crowley could do not to jump in alarma demon's eyes might change colour, but they never _glowed_.

"I would not make such demands of ones you have ill used, _shol'vah_," Sam spat in that strangely distorted voice Crowley had heard and puzzled over in recent days.

"Salim," Dean objected. "Name calling won't help."

Sam bowed his head briefly, and when he spoke again, his voice was normal. "Yeah, well, Salim's right."

"I know. I'm not disagreeing with either of you. Neither does Dishon. It still won't help." He turned back to Crowley. "You said you could get us Pestilence."

Crowley was now totally at sea regarding this Salim personality, especially considering that it had called him a traitor in Ancient Egyptian, but he forced himself to recover his composure and respond with his offer of Pestilence's front man. Dean looked thoughtfully at Crowley for a moment, and though the firelight from the hearth was dim, Crowley could swear he saw the flicker of an internal conference going on behind those green eyes.

"I've got a better idea," Dean said finally. "How about you give us this demon's coordinates, and we'll have a friend bring him straight here."

Crowley blinked. "A friend?"

A corner of Sam's mouth twitched upward in a humourless smile. "Another _shol'vah_. But one we _can_ trust."

_Castiel__?_ Crowley wondered. _No, it can't be. They would have said something if they'd found him and he was flight-worthy._ He cleared his throat. "Well, if your friend can get by all the demons guarding our target..."

"Faster than you think," Dean confirmed.

"And he won't kill me on sight?"

"If we tell him not to."

Crowley sighed; he couldn't give away his real objection, not yet. Sam had already tried to kill him twice and might not miss again. "All right, then." He rattled off the coordinates for the company where Pestilence's henchman worked. "Niveus Pharmaceutical. The demon we want is in an office on the twelfth floor; he's vice president for distribution."

Dean nodded and reached into his jacket pocket as if to find a cell phone. "Wait here."

And the man strolled out, leaving Sam glaring daggers at Crowley, who began to wonder if this plan was such a smart idea after all.

* * *

"Colonel Carter?" Maj. Kevin Marks called across the bridge of the _USS George Hammond_. "We've got an incoming message on subspace. It's Dean Winchester."

"Open a channel," replied Col. Samantha Carter, coming in from a side corridor, followed by Teal'c of the Jaffa and Dr. Daniel Jackson. Marks made the connection by the time she got to the command chair. "Dean. What's happening?"

"Well, these swine flu outbreaks are definitely Pestilence omens, Colonel," Dean's voice came over the comm, "and we've got a line on a biotech company that's involved. One of the execs is a demon who's a travel agent for the Horsemen. Dishon thinks they might have ties to the Trust as well."

"What's the name of the company?"

"Niveus Pharmaceutical." Dean gave them the coordinates and the location of the demon's office.

Daniel frowned. "That's Cam's cousin Brady. Cam said he had some weird experience over Christmas break back in 2003, went back to Stanford and just about killed himself with drugs. Hasn't been the same since. But he got straightened out..." He paused. "Thanks to his best friend Sam."

Dean cursed quietly. "Crowley didn't mention that."

"Mitchell never mentioned Sam's last name," Daniel cautioned. "It could be a coincidence."

"With Sammy, _nothing_ is a coincidence," Dean shot back before cursing under his breath again.

"We can ask when the _Odyssey_ checks in next."

"Nah, I'll have gotten it out of Crowley by then."

"We'll contact the SGC," Carter interrupted. "There may be an NID team nearby that can arrest Brady."

"Bad idea," Dean replied. "Place is probably swarming with mooks; your people wouldn't make it out alive. Safest way is to beam somebody down to Brady's office, zat him, and beam him back here."

"Where's 'here'?"

"It's a safe house outside Silver Springs, Nevada." Dean gave her the location. "Give us about ten minutes to get set on this end, and beam down outside the house."

"Marks, do a sensor sweep," Carter ordered.

"Yes, ma'am." Marks pressed the requisite buttons and had a life-signs scan of the area on the main viewscreen in a matter of seconds.

"Dean, I'm reading three life signs at your location," Carter reported. "Two Tok'ra and one other."

"Yes, ma'am," Dean replied. "This is me walking around the front of the car—which, incidentally, we've just learned is bugged."

Carter watched the corresponding green dot move on the screen, apparently giving the Impala a wide berth. "Copy that," she replied.

"Sam and Crowley are inside."

"Roger. You're sure you can handle the prisoner there?"

"Yes, ma'am. It's better if he and Crowley know as little as possible about the SGC's involvement. We probably can't keep you off Hell's radar forever, but we shouldn't attract their attention to you any sooner than we have to."

"Understood."

"Oh, and Colonel, if and when you do take down Niveus, make sure your people take extreme hazmat precautions. There's a second, much deadlier virus Pestilence is keeping up his sleeve, and it's just possible that there are samples stashed at Niveus' labs."

Carter had a sudden flashback to the Prior plague. "Deadlier how?"

Dean sighed. "It's called Croatoan; it spreads by blood-to-blood contact; it turns people into murderous zombies within four hours; it was created by demons; and it's the devil's endgame. Oh, and Sam's immune to it. That's all we know."

Daniel frowned. "How do you know he's immune?"

"Someone in River Grove, Oregon, deliberately infected him."

"When was this?"

"Late 2006. Why?"

"If we can get those records, it might give us a place to start to develop a vaccine."

"I'm not sure we've got that kind of time."

"We could set up a time dilation field if we had to," Carter observed. "That would buy us a little time. Better yet, we can get Atlantis working on it; surely there's something in the Ancient database that would be useful."

"Well, we still want to gank Pestilence before the virus gets loose," Dean noted, "but I guess it wouldn't hurt to have a backup plan. Y'know, in case."

"Right. Okay, Dean, we'll send Teal'c to pick up Brady in ten minutes and beam him to your location. Be standing where you are now so we'll know we're not beaming them into your car."

"Copy that. Thanks, Colonel. Winchester out."

Daniel turned to Carter. "Be even faster if we had Niveus' records as well."

Carter nodded. "Have General O'Neill put Dr. Lee on it right away. You go see what you can find about River Grove, and have Dr. Lam make a copy of her report on the Winchesters' bloodwork to send to Carson Beckett. We'll grab a blood sample from Brady as well. The Atlantis dial-in is in twelve hours."

"Right."

"Marks?"

"Yes, ma'am," Marks nodded and beamed Daniel down to the SGC.

Carter activated the ship's intercom and ordered a medical team to the bridge. She then noticed that Teal'c continued to stare thoughtfully at the screen. "Is there a problem, Teal'c?"

"We have programmed our sensors to distinguish human life signs from both symbiote carriers and Wraith," the Jaffa observed. "Perhaps it will be possible to do the same for demons."

"Worth a shot. What do you think, Marks?"

"Theoretically, it should work once we identify any anomalous readings from Col. Mitchell's cousin," shrugged Marks, who had helped Drs. Rodney McKay and Radek Zelenka to modify the sensors on the _USS Daedalus_ to detect Wraith after the siege of Atlantis five years earlier. "But we don't know yet if demonic life signs _can_ be distinguished from those of normal humans." He didn't add _or whether demons even exist_, but his face betrayed his skepticism.

"Well, we do have the sensor data from Muncie," Carter noted. "I can look over the readings for Gabriel and Kali once we get Brady delivered to the Winchesters. That would at least tell us whether any kind of supernatural creature gives a different sensor reading from humans."

Teal'c tilted his head in concession. "But did it not strike you, Col. Carter, that Dean Winchester seems to regard Brady and Crowley as two of a kind?"

Carter looked again at the white dot, which had moved to a position next to Dean's life sign. Then Marks cursed as the white dot suddenly jumped to another position away from both Winchesters.

"Holy Hannah," Carter breathed. "You're right, Teal'c. Marks—"

"On it, ma'am," Marks replied, his hands already flying over his console.

* * *

Tearing his gaze away from the dreary overcast sky, Dean slid the Asgard communication stone back into his pocket and turned to go inside, only to find Crowley standing behind him looking worried. "Thought I told you to stay inside," the hunter growled.

"You're not... bringing him here, are you?" asked the demon.

"Who?"

"Brady Williams."

Dean frowned. "Yeah, I am."

"That's a very bad idea."

"Why? Because he and Sam went to Stanford together?" Crowley blanched, but Dean didn't give him time to respond. "When were you planning to tell me about that, anyway?"

"In due time," Crowley replied, clearly trying to regain his equilibrium. "But it's worse than you think. Brady wasn't just Sam's best friend at Stanford. It was after he was possessed that he..." He glanced over his shoulder and lowered his voice. "He introduced Sam to Jess at Azazel's order. _And_ he's the one that killed her. So we really can't bring Brady here. Sam will kill him before we get what we need."

Dean might well have torn Crowley to shreds then and there had Dishon not nudged him and said, _Let__ me handle this._

Dean sighed. _Fine.__ Just remember we're on the clock. _And he stepped back.

Dishon deliberately made Dean's eyes flash when he brought his head up, and this time Crowley did jump. "Do not be a fool, demon," the Tok'ra snarled. "My brothers are trustworthy."

"Brothers?" Crowley echoed incredulously.

Dishon smirked. "If you are entitled to your secrets, then so am I to mine. Come. We have..." He made a show of checking Dean's watch. "Nine minutes before the _shol'vah_ and the prisoner arrive."

Crowley made a small strangled noise and vanished. Dishon returned control to Dean, who smiled to himself, grabbed a can of spray paint and a coil of rope out of the trunk, and headed inside to prepare an interrogation room in the abandoned house Crowley had claimed for his own use.

"Need help, Dean?" Sam called from the living room.

"Yeah. Grab a broom and come sweep this floor, will you?" Dean made sure the middle of the sparsely-furnished dining room was clear, then set about testing dining chairs to find one strong enough to hold Brady.

Sam dutifully fetched the broom from the kitchen. "Where's Crowley?"

A crash from upstairs answered the question.

"I believe he fears me," Dishon said with a wink.

As the Tok'ra gave back control, Sam chuckled and made short work of sweeping a clear space for Dean to paint a devil's trap on the floor. Dean was just about to close the trap when Crowley teleported to the edge of the room, looking highly annoyed.

"You might have warned a chap," the demon groused. "You nearly trapped _me_."

"What were you doing upstairs, Mr. Know-It-All?" Dean shot back without looking up as he finished his work.

"Making some last-minute preparations, since you stupidly insist on bringing our prisoner here."

Sam frowned. "What's wrong with bringing him here?"

"Nothing," Dean replied firmly, glaring at Crowley briefly. "I'll explain once Murray gets here. I trust you. I just need you focused and on mission."

Catching the significance of Dean's use of Teal'c's cover identity, Sam inclined his head in agreement. "Yeah. Okay."

Dean checked his watch. "Be right back. I gotta go meet Murray. Wait here, Sam." Palming the communication stone, he stepped outside and made his way to the spot where he'd last been standing to talk to Carter. "Winchester to _Hammond_," he said once the stone was activated. "We're ready."

"Understood," Carter replied. "Stand by."

As Dean returned the stone to his pocket, Teal'c, wearing his favorite fedora, beamed down with a stunned Brady. No sooner had they materialized, however, than Crowley appeared behind them.

"Evening, uncle!" the crossroads demon cried, threw a burlap bag decorated with a devil's trap over Brady's head, and proceeded to bash the taller demon's skull with a crowbar.

The first blow connected with a sickening crack, and blood began to soak through the bag. Exorcism could not save Sam's friend now, Dean knew. But the second blow never fell. Crowley's arm was caught mid-swing in the powerful grip of the Jaffa.

"That was unnecessary," Teal'c stated, forcing Crowley to lower his arm away from Brady's head. "He was already subdued."

Crowley shrugged, thoroughly unrepentant. "I'm a demon, mate. Gotta let me have _some_ fun."

"Crowley," Dean warned.

Crowley sighed and dropped the crowbar in favor of a pocketknife. "All right. But this part _is_ necessary. We've got to lock our young friend in his meatsuit. No zapping off, no smoking out. It's an important piece of our bargaining strategy."

Teal'c raised a questioning eyebrow at Dean, who sighed and nodded unhappily. He then braced Brady while Crowley ripped open the younger man's shirt and used the knife to carve a sigil on his chest. The fact that it didn't bleed confirmed Dean's fear that the possessed man was already dead, despite the demon keeping his body functioning.

"Right!" Crowley said cheerfully as he wiped his knife on Brady's shirt. "Murray, is it? Bring him inside." And he turned and walked back into the house.

Again Teal'c waited for Dean. The hunter sighed again and supported the unconscious demon from the other side, and together he and Teal'c carried Brady in.

"How many times'd you have to zat him?" Dean asked quietly.

"Three," Teal'c confessed. "And even that barely stunned him."

Dean grumbled something very impolite about demons in Goa'uld. Teal'c raised an eyebrow in what was probably amusement.

Sam was waiting inside with the chair positioned in the exact center of the devil's trap and the rope ready in his hands. Dean and Teal'c set Brady none too gently in the chair, and Sam made short work of tying him up.

"Well, no sense everyone hanging about in here," Crowley observed. "He'll be out for hours, I'd wager."

Teal'c acknowledged him with a tilt of the head, then turned to Sam and Dean. "We will be needed elsewhere in less than twelve hours."

Dean nodded. "Okay, then I'm gonna try to get some sleep. Sam?"

"Yeah, I'll... sleep."

The slight hesitation over the word _sleep_ only confused Crowley, but Dean knew what it meant. Teal'c had shown them both how to meditate—_kel'no'reem_, he called it—and Sam had quickly found it more restful than sleep, since it wasn't the sort of dream state Lucifer could easily invade and it gave him some time one-on-one with Salim. Dean preferred hunting down one of Dishon's memories and dreaming about it.

"I will keep watch, then," Teal'c stated.

Crowley looked annoyed at that. "Look here, Murray..."

"Crowley," Dean interrupted. "You want us, you get him. He doesn't leave until he thinks it's safe. Got it?"

Crowley huffed. "Fine. If you morons think he's worth the risk, I won't argue. Is he a hunter?"

"You could say that," Sam shrugged.

"I have spent many years destroying false gods," Teal'c stated blandly. "And I have hunted Wraith and other creatures that have threatened this planet." He paused, then added with a totally straight face, "No brag, just fact."

Dean was going to kill Bobby for introducing Teal'c to _The Guns of Will Sonnett_.

Sam nudged Dean's arm. "C'mon. Let's get some rest."

Dean nodded. "All right. Murray?"

"I will inform you when he wakes," Teal'c replied.

Dean nodded again and headed up the stairs, Sam two steps behind him. Once they had made their way to the bedroom, Dean turned to his brother. "So do you want to know now or when he wakes up?"

"It's someone I know, isn't it?"

"Yeah."

Sam bit his lip. "Let's make it later. Salim and I need to talk about some other stuff that came up while you were outside."

"You're sure?"

"Yeah."

"Okay." Dean sat down on the ratty old bed and took off his boots.

"Dean?"

"Yeah?"

Sam played with the handle of the demon-killing knife for a moment. "I just... thanks."

Dean wanted to ask what of the number of things that had happened that night was cause for thanks, but both he and Dishon knew he didn't need to. So instead he replied with a small smile and a "Get some rest, Sammy."

Sam smiled back and settled on the floor to kel'no'reem.


	2. You Prob'ly Think This War Is About You

Chapter 2  
You Prob'ly Think This War Is About You

Sam had no idea how others experienced kel'no'reem. Dean, at least, wouldn't say, and Teal'c said it was very different for Jaffa. For Sam, it was both like and unlike dreaming. He usually found himself and Salim, who appeared as a younger version of his previous host (a dead ringer for Jeffrey Hunter), in a space that was a cross between Bobby's kitchen and Salim's favorite pub on a now-destroyed Jaffa planet called Kallana. They'd close all the doors, sit down at the table, and chat, sometimes continuing a conversation that had begun earlier in the day, sometimes promising to continue the current conversation on the road or whenever an opportunity arose.

This time, the first thing Salim said once the doors were closed was, "You are_ insane_."

Sam sighed and sank into the wooden seat. "I don't know what else to do, Salim. I mean, I won't do it unless we all agree—you and Dishon included—but unless Gabriel knows of a way to get Lucifer to jump..."

Salim chuckled wryly and sat down across from him. "I would not rely too heavily on Gabriel's powers of trickery in this case, given what happened in Muncie."

"So we're out of options. We can't overpower him by brute force when he's still in Nick. You saw that."

"Can you not force him out of his temporary vessel, as your father did with Azazel?"

"He's still an archangel, dude. Pretty much the only being that could do that is Michael, and he's got target fixation. Or God, but you know what Joshua said He'd said."

Salim shook his head in disgust. "Typical. The Ancients would not have granted even that much acknowledgment of your quest."

"They're not gods."

"Just an observation. They could be powerful allies if they would condescend to interfere."

"Not against Lucifer. 'On Earth is not his equal,' remember."

"So what makes you think you can overcome him from within?"

"Bobby fought his possession. Dad fought off Azazel."

"Those were lesser demons. You could not overcome Meg in the entire week you were possessed."

Sam frowned. "You know what happened with thatthat binding link bound my consciousness as well."

"And Lucifer would not?"

"Angelic possession's not the same. At least, that's what I gathered from Dean and Jimmy."

"Jimmy?"

"Jimmy Novak, Castiel's vessel."

Salim thought for a moment. "Ah, yes—he likened it to being chained to a comet." He gave Sam a Look. "I happen to know a thing or two about comets."

"Salim..."

"Sam. This is folly. You are his true vessel; he will not be so easily overcome."

"It's the only chance we have, as far as I can tell. And it's not like I need more than a moment to jump in the hole."

Salim sighed. "You do need my consent as well."

"I know that. Even if I didn't, I wouldn't do this unless everyone was on board. It's not like I _want_ Lucifer riding around in my skin. And I don't particularly want to go to Hell." Sam shook his head. "But I let him out. I need to put him back."

Salim regarded him for a long moment. "Let us speak of this with Bobby," he finally said. "He is the wisest of us in these matters."

Sam nodded. "Yeah. Okay."

Two mugs of ale appeared on the table then, and Sam drank gratefully. The advantage to drinking in kel'no'reem was that you could enjoy the taste; the disadvantage was that you didn't actually get drunk even if you wanted to.

Salim started to take a drink of his own ale, but something caught his attention, and he sat up straighter to listen.

"What?"

"Gabriel is here."

Sam frowned. "How can you tell?"

"I am not sure. I only sense his presence as surely as I sense that of the two demons and the naquadah in Teal'c's blood." Salim suddenly quirked a smile. "And now I can hear his voice. I believe he has brought food."

Sam turned his attention away from Salim and began to make out the distinctive smell of Cajun food and the sound of voices drifting through the doors. His stomach growled.

"Go on," Salim laughed as the kel'no'reem space began to fade. "Go eat. We can speak of our plans later."

"Thanks, man," Sam grinned at him before taking a deep breath and opening his eyes to the dark bedroom.

Dean rolled over and frowned at him. "Do you smell..."

"Jambalaya," Sam nodded. "Gabriel's here."

"Thought he meant he would bring it to us at Bobby's," Dean said with a groan as he sat up and started to pull his boots on.

"Didn't realize I was hungry."

"Yeah, neither did I." Dean tied his bootlaces and stood. "You and Salim talk about whatever it was?"

Sam nodded. "Not to any conclusion, but we talked."

"Anything I need to know about?"

"Not yet. I'll tell you when we figure it out. I promise."

Dean looked worried as he helped Sam to his feet. "No more secrets, Sammy."

"No. It's not like that. We just... we need to think it over some more."

Dean gave him a long, searching once-over, then nodded once and took a deep breath to signal a change of subject. "Hope Gabe thought to bring beer."

Sam snorted and smiled. "Me, too."

* * *

Teal'c was not at all sure what to make of Crowley. Long years of service to Apophis, the careful tutelage of Bra'tac, and his experiences as a member of SG-1 had sharpened his sensitivity to the presence of evil, and both of the demons in the house exuded an aura of dark power that made his skin crawl. They reminded him of Adria. Crowley, at least, had no qualms about engaging in wanton destruction; he admitted that his attack on Brady had been pure spite, which had immediately put him below the Wraith on Teal'c's scale of contempt. Yet Crowley also seemed inclined to give the Winchesters all the help he could, provided it fit with his own agenda. The exact nature of that agenda was what had Teal'c worried.

Crowley had plainly expected Sam and Dean to be without friends or technology beyond the Tau'ri norm. The fact that he hadn't wanted Teal'c involved and backed down only at Dean's insistence did not speak well for the benevolence of his plan. Nor did the fact that he had withheld crucial information about Col. Mitchell's cousin. What else wasn't he telling them? What kinds of traps had he set for them? Why did he want the Winchesters to be alone?

Teal'c was still musing on these questions after two hours of keeping watch at the front door, ignoring and being ignored by the demon lounging in the living room, when he felt a friendly lightness brush his mind with a query. He had no idea how he had formed such a connection with Gabriel, but he was glad for it now and sent back an amused affirmative while keeping his face carefully neutral. Gabriel returned a 'hold on' and disengaged.

"Do you always keep your hat on indoors?" Crowley finally asked him in a tone that was both conversational and insulting.

"It is a matter of my religion to keep my head covered," Teal'c stated evenly without looking around at him.

That excuse might work with most Tau'ri, but Crowley frowned. "You're never Jewish."

Teal'c tilted his head in concession and continued to watch for Gabriel.

"No, listen, mate. I know all the world's current religions. And I can tell at a glance that your soul doesn't belong to any of them."

Teal'c raised an eyebrow. "I did not say it was a current religion of this world."

He then sensed rather than saw the searching look Crowley gave him and raised his mental shields as high as he dared until he got a quick 'okay' from Gabriel, who promptly materialized on the porch with a bag of takeout boxes in his left hand, a takeout bowl and a Dr Pepper in his right, and a case of beer under one arm. Crowley sat bolt upright in alarm.

"Good evening, Loki," Teal'c said mildly as he opened the door.

"Murray!" Gabriel replied, catching on and brandishing the food that was clearly for him. "Thought you might like some shrimp touffe for a midnight snack."

Teal'c smiled. "Indeed. I thank you."

"You've just come from Louisiana, then, have you?" Crowley asked suspiciously.

"Living it up on Bourbon Street," Gabriel grinned, handing Teal'c the bowl and soda and stepping inside. "But I promised the boys some jambalaya, and then I remembered that Murray has a thing for shrimp touffe. Thought I should bring it by while it was still hot."

Teal'c bowed his head in acknowledgment and closed the door.

Crowley frowned. "Isn't it a bit late for that? Most restaurants in the French Quarter closed three hours ago."

Gabriel smirked. "Chef at the Bombay Club owes me some favors."

"Exactly how did a Norse Trickster come to have a Cajun chef in his debt?"

"How did the King of the Crossroads manage to keep the Colt under wraps for two years?"

Crowley snorted and relaxed. "Touché."

Gabriel glanced at—and probably through, Teal'c guessed—the closed dining room doors and turned back to Teal'c with a surprised frown. "What's _he_ doing here?"

"We have captured him for interrogation," Teal'c answered.

Gabriel turned to Crowley. "I suppose this was your idea?"

"Have to get the information somewhere," Crowley shrugged.

Gabriel locked eyes with Teal'c, who quickly replayed the conversation on the _Hammond_ for him. Gabriel nodded once and released him. "Just so we're on the same page."

"Indeed," Teal'c nodded back.

The sound of boots on the stairs announced the Winchesters' arrival. "That beer better be cold," Dean called down to them.

"Icy," Gabriel called back. "And you're welcome."

"Thanks, man. Really. We are hungry."

"Living room good?"

"Yeah," the brothers chorused as they reached the foot of the stairs.

Gabriel glanced around the fire-lit room and made his way toward the hearth to set out the Cajun cuisine he'd brought for Sam and Dean.

"So how's New Orleans?" Sam asked as they followed him.

"Pretty much the same," Gabriel replied, and Teal'c got the distinct impression that they were not actually talking about the city. "The rebuilding's pretty slow, but it's definitely better than it was right after the storm."

"Loki, why _are_ you here?" Crowley asked irritably from the couch.

Gabriel didn't look around at him. "What, a guy's not allowed to check in with his buddies occasionally when there's an Apocalypse on?"

"At least this time he brought food," Dean observed, accepting a packet of plasticware from the angel.

"Whaddaya mean, _this_ time?" Gabriel objected, handing him a beer as well. "I brought the pizza for the UConn-Stanford game."

"Yeah, but last week the menu wasn't quite so friendly."

"At least _you_ weren't on it. And there was pie."

"Hey, speaking of which..."

"They didn't have any. But they did have apple strudel with caramel sauce."

Dean's stomach growled loudly in approval, and Teal'c fought a smile as countless similar conversations between the members of SG-1 came to mind unbidden.

"Dude," Sam said pointedly, taking his own plasticware and beer from Gabriel.

"What?" Dean frowned, handing him a box of jambalaya. "I haven't eaten in, like, six hours."

Crowley finally got up off the couch. "What I _mean_ is, this house is warded."

"Against _your_ kind, maybe," Gabriel retorted, pointing a plastic fork at the demon for emphasis. "Takes more than a few scribbles to stop me. And besides, Murray let me in."

Crowley made a noise akin to a low growl and left the room.

"He's up to something, kids," Gabriel warned in a much lower voice, putting his hand on the wall and releasing a burst of power that Teal'c felt but the result of which he could not see. "I dunno what, but it's a cinch he's not doing this out of the goodness of his black little heart. I've tangled with him before; I should know."

"That was my suspicion also," Teal'c agreed.

Dean shrugged and walked over to the couch with his food. "We just gotta keep him off balance and not let him do the same to us."

Only Teal'c noticed the worried glance Gabriel gave Sam at that statement, since Sam had just turned to look out the window and Dean was already digging into his jambalaya. The archangel then met the Jaffa's eyes; Teal'c nodded once, and Gabriel nodded back.

Then they settled on the hearth and started in on their own late supper.

* * *

Meanwhile, the _USS Odyssey_ had just dropped out of hyperspace at its arranged rendezvous point over Revanna for a meeting with a Tok'ra mole inside the Lucian Alliance when the Stargate on the deserted planet below activated. The communications officer called Col. Cameron Mitchell to the bridge and informed him that the SGC was hailing the ship.

"Open a channel," Mitchell ordered. At the comm officer's nod, he said, "SGC, this is _Odyssey_. Go ahead."

"Colonel," came Maj. Gen. Hank Landry's voice. "I'm afraid you'll have to cut your rendezvous short and head back to Earth as soon as possible. In fact, all of Earth's ships have been recalled."

Mitchell frowned. "What's going on, sir?"

"We've received new intel from the Tok'ra—apparently the world is going to end next month, and your cousin Brady is in the middle of it."

A stunned silence settled over the bridge.

Mitchell cleared his throat. "Say again?"

"I believe you heard me correctly."

"_Brady?_"

"If our sources are correct, and so far they have been, he's working for the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Actually, two of the four are now out of commission, and we've taken Brady into custody, but still."

"We are talking about the same cousin, sir? The one who was pre-med at Stanford until something... weird happened to him over Christmas break of '03?"

"Apparently the 'something weird' has a name: demon possession. As in real demons, not Goa'uld. Col. Carter verified it with the _Hammond_'s sensors—his life sign is not that of a human or a symbiote carrier. And Teal'c found some paraphernalia in his office that's used for heavy-duty black magic."

Another stunned silence descended, only to be broken by a remark by Vala Mal Doran:

"Well, that explains some things."

* * *

After stomping around the outside perimeter of the house in a vain attempt to cool off (and an equally vain attempt to find Murray's mode of transportation), Crowley let himself into the interrogation room and settled into a chair to glower at the demon currently known as Brady. They had their own history, but for the moment, it wasn't important. Brady's history with Sam Winchester was what mattered.

Or so Crowley had originally thought.

This evening had not gone at all well. The idea had been to let Sam stew while Crowley took Dean to Niveus, trick Dean into a position to let Brady give him a good beating, snag Brady in the middle of it and administer a good coshing of his own, and then decide whether or not to allow Dean to coerce him into bringing Brady back to Sam once Sam was well primed to explode on contact with Brady. As it was, not only had the Winchesters proven utterly baffling with their flashing eyes and split personalities, but they'd dragged in Murray, whom Crowley could hardly read, and now that blasted meddler Loki had turned up. _Loki_, who shouldn't even have survived the summit of the gods. Rumour had it that the Hardy Boys had gotten Kali out alive, too, but why would they bother with Loki, or he with them? The whole of Hell knew about the Mystery Spot gag and how much both Winchesters had hated Loki for that—Alastair had even made Dean relive it for a year or so with the roles reversed, which had entertained the lower ranks no end.

Worse, they'd done something to the living room that made it impossible for Crowley to eavesdrop on them, and the Impala was apparently off limits until they'd had a chance to search for the coin he'd had planted. If there was one thing Crowley hated, it was being denied information.

So he sat and glowered at Brady, using various tricks at his disposal to keep the other demon asleep, and tried to think of some way to salvage his plan. Occasionally he checked the latest news on his iPhone, as if he might find inspiration in the headlines; but the world's focus was on the aftermath of an oil rig fire in the Gulf of Mexico (Crowley imagined those imps were having fun) and volcanic eruptions in Iceland that were playing havoc with European airspace. The swine flu outbreaks were front page news in America, but Crowley wasn't willing to share all that he knew or suspected about them until he'd gotten what he needed out of Brady.

Eventually, however, he had to give up on brainstorming. The sky was beginning to lighten, and Murray had said something about the Winchesters being _needed elsewhere_ (!) that morning. If he wanted their help in interrogating Brady, he'd have to get it soon.

So he dropped the charms he'd been using, and a moment later Brady woke with a violent start, cursing and struggling against his bonds. Crowley still couldn't hear anything from the living room, but he was certain the others could hear the racket Brady was making and trusted them to come to investigate.

"It's no good, mate," Crowley finally said nonchalantly. "The Winchesters don't muck about. You won't get loose unless they want you to."

"Damn you, Crowley," Brady snarled with a final tug at the ropes.

Crowley chuckled. "Bit late for that, isn't it?"

Then Brady stilled, suddenly wary, as both demons sensed the hunters' approach. Crowley turned to see that Murray and Loki hung back by several paces, while Sam was, as usual, barely two steps behind Dean.

"'Bout time," Dean observed as they got to the doorway.

Crowley sighed. "I told you he'd be out for hours."

Sam rolled his eyes. "Let's just get this over with, okay? We've gotta be somewhere at 9."

"Sam?" Brady interrupted. "Sam, is that you?"

Sam froze. Dean turned to give him a warning glance before striding into the room and pulling the bag off Brady's head.

"Brady," Sam breathed.

Brady smirked. "Brady hasn't been Brady in years—not since, oh, middle of our sophomore year?"

The colour drained from Sam's face. "What?"

"That's right." Sam shot a startled look at Dean, who returned a look that implored him to remain calm, but Brady ploughed ahead. "You had a devil on your shoulder even then."

Sam muttered something Crowley couldn't understand as the implications hit home. He then repeated the curse—from the fury on his face, it had to be a curse—and cried, "_You_ introduced me to _Jess_!"

"Ding, ding! I think he's got it!" Brady crowed.

Sam lunged at Brady, but Dean blocked him and pushed him out of the room even as he shouted death threats at his former friend, who chuckled as they left. They were behind the soundproof barrier again before Crowley could turn to watch them fight, and then Murray and Loki exchanged a glance that prompted Loki to snap his fingers and send the brothers to their meeting ahead of schedule. But despite the sour look Crowley gave Loki, inwardly he was cackling.

_That_ bit had gone _exactly_ according to plan.

* * *

.

* * *

A/N: The title of this chapter is taken from a parody of "You're So Vain" by John of Argghhh!totally different context, but I thought it fit. The fanon notion of Cam and Vala being off on the _Odyssey_ having top-secret adventures is one I encountered first (IIRC) in one of the Stargate-goes-Regency AUs that are so well done that I enjoy them despite not liking Jane Austen. And I started writing a bit of Cas-POV fluff a while back about the boys and their angels watching this year's March Madness (with Dean supporting Big 12 teams and Sam still cheering for the Stanford women's team) that I may or may not dust off and try to finish eventually.

Jeffrey Hunter played Sgt. John H. Fuller in _The Longest Day_ (the engineer who gets a Dear John letter and then gets killed on Omaha), and he was the original Capt. Christopher Pike on _Star Trek_. He was also in _The Searchers_, which is Jim Beaver's favorite movie. I figured that gave him enough connections to both shows to be a good face for Salim's previous host.

A brief reminder re: cover identities: Teal'c's name when off-base is "Murray," and Gabriel has been in "witness protection" on Earth as a Trickster, specifically Loki. What he and the Winchesters didn't know (until "Snakeheads") is that Loki is also the name of a rogue Asgard. Crowley would know both characters only under their assumed names; thus, scenes from his POV will refer to Murray and Loki rather than Teal'c and Gabriel.

And yes, the use of British spellings for Crowley's POV is deliberate.

I had a deuce of a job finding a real French Quarter restaurant for Gabriel to frequentnone of the online menus I looked at had both jambalaya and shrimp touffe as dinner options. The Bombay Club is open late on Thursdays, though, and I figured Dean would appreciate Apfelstrudel (surely there's a Schultz in the Winchester line?).

Also, if you're at all interested in the sorts of random conversations SG-1 has off the record, check out AkamaiMom's "Team Building" and "More Team Building." They'll leave you in stitches.


	3. Science!

A/N #1: Word to the wise: never sell your textbooks. You never know when you'll need, say, a biochemistry textbook from which to make up a halfway plausible sci-fi explanation for a fantasy plot device that gets hand-waved in canon. However, it is canon that Goa'uld symbiotes release a protein containing the metal naquadah into the host's system, and any current or former host is able to sense its presence in another. (Side note: there's a missing scene on LJ by musesfool, "Two Weeks Out," that was posted after I wrote this chapter—it's a great canon look at the vaccine idea. But of course, in _this_ AU, the boys have Atlantis to turn to!)

A/N #2: For purposes of this AU, Chuck is not God. I'm not even sure he's Ancient. Also, I'm assuming that post-"Enemy at the Gate," the Atlantis crew perfected the gene therapy that eliminates the Wraith's need to feed on humans, allowing them to keep Todd on ice indefinitely without running the risk of him starving.

A/N #3: The slogan's actually "one riot, one [Texas] Ranger," but I didn't think Gabriel would hesitate to borrow it.

A/N #4: The bulk of this story and the next was written prior to Comic-Con and so does not comply with spoilers that have come out this past weekend—though there's at least one plot point that's a definite case of "great minds" in a future chapter. But hey, it's AU anyway...

* * *

Chapter 3  
Science!

"So you've got him talked down?" Gabriel asked into his cell phone as he settled back into his chair in Castiel's hospital room in New Orleans half an hour later.

"Not really," Dean confessed over the background noises of the SGC. "We had it out about whether or not to trust Crowley and whether or not we really need Brady, and Daniel heard us yelling and offered to take Sam to the gym to cool off. They've been there about fifteen minutes. But I think Salim's the only one who can talk some sense into Sam right now."

Gabriel sighed. "That's what I was afraid of."

"Think that was Crowley's idea?"

"Probably. Not about Salim, obviously, but as soon as I sensed that that demon was there, I suspected Crowley was trying to get a rise out of Sam. I've done it often enough to know what buttons to push."

"And Brady pushed the big red one that launches the nukes."

"Second only to the one marked 'Dean' that blows up half the solar system."

This time it was Dean who sighed. "Well, look, I'm gonna head down to the mess hall, see about gettin' some breakfast. Was Teal'c planning to come to this briefing?"

"Said he didn't need to. I guess you and Col. Carter have all the information he has."

"Okay. Probably best for someone to be there in case Crowley tries anything, anyway."

"That's what he thought."

"How's Cas?"

Gabriel glanced at the comatose angel. "No change."

Dean sighed again. "We'll have our phones on."

"Right."

"Hey, Gabriel? Thanks. Really."

Gabriel smiled. "Go get your breakfast, Dean."

Dean chuckled and hung up.

Gabriel pocketed his cell phone and sighed as he looked again at the eerily still figure on the bed in front of him. _Please wake up soon, little brother_, he thought, reaching over to take Castiel's hand. _We're going to need you, and... well, we're worried about you._

The embers of Castiel's grace flared a little in response, but there was no other sign that he had heard. And Gabriel decided that he really hated hospitals.

* * *

By the time Sam had finished taking out his rage on a punching bag in the SGC's gym, he sensed that he and Daniel were no longer alone. His back was to whoever had just walked in, but he sensed naquadah, so he assumed that it was Dean. He hesitated, expecting a wisecrack about his fighting style, but instead...

"Hmmm," came a feminine purr. "I think he's a match for Muscles."

"Are you kidding?" replied a tenor with a slight Southern drawl. "Teal'c's got a hundred years on the guy."

Daniel, who had been spotting for Sam, looked past him to the newcomers with a start. "Oh, hey, guys. Wasn't expecting you back so soon."

"We decided to come on back through the Gate," the man—a brown-haired colonel, Sam saw as he turned to face them—stated. "The ship should get here in a few hours; they've plugged in the ZPM."

"Is he Tok'ra?" the dark-haired woman who was _not_ Qetesh _or_ Claudia Black asked, looking at Sam with open curiosity. "He dresses like he's Tau'ri."

"I guess I should introduce you," Daniel said with an apologetic grimace aimed at Sam. "Col. Cameron Mitchell, Vala Mal Doran, this is Sam Winchester. He's currently host to the Tok'ra Salim."

Vala waved cheerfully, but understanding dawned on Mitchell's face as they shook hands. "Sam Winchester, Stanford Class of '06? Pre-law?"

"That's me," Sam confirmed.

"I take it you just found out about my cousin."

Sam blinked. "Brady was..."

Mitchell nodded. "I've been wanting to hit something myself ever since Gen. Landry told me."

Sam sighed. "I hate to tell you this, but being possessed that long, he's probably already dead. Even if he's not, another demon carved a binding link on his chest; we'd have to do even more damage to his body to get the demon out."

Mitchell nodded again, his face grim. "Thanks for being honest with me."

Vala bit her lip. "If you can't save him, then... what?"

"That _thing_ set me up," Sam snarled, clenching his fists once more without meaning to. "It dies as soon as we're done with it."

The look that passed between Mitchell and Daniel, one of mingled concern and understanding, was enough to put a damper on Sam's renewed anger.

He sighed. "I'm sorry, guys. Colonel. The real Brady was a good guy; he didn't deserve this. His only mistake was... being friends with me."

Mitchell frowned. "Why do you think this is your fault?"

Sam shook his head, but Daniel said, "Sam. Landry's going to brief him on you guys anyway. He deserves to know what happened."

_If you do not tell him, I will_, Salim chimed in.

"Why don't we go get some coffee?" Vala suggested.

Sam took a deep breath and let it out again. "Yeah. Okay."

Daniel led the way to the mess hall, where Dean had found a pretty young scientist to flirt with. Once they'd gone through the line to get breakfast, Sam introduced Dean to Mitchell and Vala, and Dean gave Mitchell his condolences as they found a table and sat down together.

Barely halfway through Sam's bare-bones recitation of the Winchester family history, however, they were interrupted by someone else asking to join their group. The brothers looked up to see two more colonels in flight suits, one mustachioed black man and one balding white man, standing next to their table—and Dean cursed and reached for his gun.

Sam caught his hand. "Dean? What's wrong?"

"_Christo_," said Dean.

The colonels' only reaction was to frown at each other in confusion.

Daniel cleared his throat. "Um, guys, this is Col. Abe Ellis of the _Apollo_ and Col. Steven Caldwell of the _Daedalus_. Sam and Dean Winchester, our Tok'ra informants."

Dean was still staring at the white man as if he were—well, a hunt. "Steven Caldwell," he repeated. "Not Samuel Campbell?"

Confused, Caldwell looked from Dean to Daniel and back. "No."

"Dean," Sam tried again. "He's got naquadah in his blood."

Dean took a deep breath and ran his free hand over his face. "Yeah. Sorry, Colonel. It's just... you look exactly like my grandpa did right before he died."

It was Sam's turn to be startled as he released Dean's hand, but Caldwell relaxed. "That's all right, Mr. Winchester," Caldwell replied as he and Ellis sat down. "Didn't think anyone had gotten around to cloning me, but we've seen some pretty weird stuff out in Pegasus. And considering that the Trust managed to plant a Goa'uld in my head without anyone realizing until it tried to blow up Atlantis..."

Dean grimaced and looked away, clearly not relishing the reminder that their maternal grandfather's cause of death was demon possession.

Caldwell stopped. "What?"

Sam cleared his throat. "Maybe I'd better start over."

* * *

"It took some time to decipher all of Niveus' records," said Dr. Bill Lee to the commanders and scientists assembled in the drab grey SGC briefing room and the turquoise-and-copper, Art Deco-ish conference room of the Ancient city of Atlantis later that morning. "For a while there, we were afraid that the demons had managed to keep everything about the Croatoan virus completely off the grid..."

"Lee," Lt. Gen. Jack O'Neill warned, concerned that the scientist was about to start rambling.

Lee cleared his throat nervously. "As it turns out, Niveus has been developing a new H1N1 flu vaccine. With the new outbreaks in Nevada, corporate management has put pressure on the labs to distribute the vaccine without the proper human trials. Apparently the heaviest pressure has come from Mr. Williams."

A stereo curse from the Winchesters drew everyone's attention away from Lee. But the first response to it came from Atlantis.

"Aye," nodded Dr. Carson Beckett. "If the Croatoan pathogen is strictly blood-borne, conventional disease vectors won't allow it to spread fast enough to do the job. But disguised as a vaccine for another disease that's already been cause for public hysteria..."

"Instant epidemic," Sam agreed.

"Catching Pestilence will stop the swine flu outbreaks," Dean continued, "but there's no evidence the Croatoan virus even needs a demon around to remain active."

"I have never been so glad to be in another galaxy in my _life_," muttered McKay.

"Rodney," warned Lt. Col. John Sheppard.

"Okay," said O'Neill. "We know Niveus is involved in this. Obviously, we need to shut them down. But that's no guarantee that other companies that manufacture swine flu vaccines haven't also been compromised or that Pestilence won't start spreading the virus himself if he's cornered. Dr. Beckett, what are our chances of getting a Croatoan vaccine?"

"I can't be certain until I look over the data you've just sent me, General," the Scot replied. "The blood work you sent should provide me with a starting point. But just in case, I'll have both Dr. Keller and Todd look at it with me. We should know in a few hours if we'll need a time dilation field or not."

"Dr. Lee, were you able to locate any information at all about the virus?"

"Not much," Lee confessed. "Certainly not anything as useful as the structure. But I sent everything I found in the data burst."

"Daniel?"

Daniel shook his head. "Nothing much on my end, either. I finally managed to gain access to the River Grove clinic's database, but there's no record of the Winchesters or of any kind of epidemic. It just... stops around the beginning of November of '06."

Sam nodded thoughtfully. "Demons probably deleted it. Not that there was much to go on to begin with—the doctor didn't have a microscope strong enough to see the virus itself, just the sulfur residue it left behind."

"Do we know what kind of time frame we're looking at?" asked Sheppard.

The Winchesters shrugged in unison. "Way things are goin', I'd say a week, _maybe_ two," Dean ventured.

McKay grimaced. "I'll prep the time dilation device just in case."

"Thank you for the vote of confidence, Rodney," Beckett deadpanned.

"Hey," McKay shot back, "if _anyone_ can come up with a vaccine for a demon zombie virus in a week, it's you, Carson. I'd just rather be safe than sorry."

"At least this time we've got some advance warning that the virus is coming," Carter noted. "We knew about the Prior plague in '05, but we weren't watching for anyone to come back with it."

"We'll have the NID shut down Niveus today," O'Neill stated. "No sense wasting time. Winchester, before you go, I want you to talk Barrett through the precautions the team needs to take before they go in."

"Yes, sir," the brothers chorused, since the general hadn't indicated which of them he meant.

Then Dishon came forward and said, "Actually, Gen. O'Neill, it might make more sense for Gabriel to accompany the strike team. Although he is not completely recovered, he is still an archangel."

Ignoring the confused looks being exchanged in Atlantis, O'Neill nodded. "How soon can you get him here?"

Before Dean could reach for his cell phone, Gabriel appeared in the doorway. "Did someone ask for me?"

Several people in Atlantis sat forward in their chairs. Apparently the camera was angled in such a way that they could tell Gabriel hadn't just come around the corner.

"Thought you were in New Orleans," Sam frowned as Gabriel conjured a chair and sat down at the table.

"I got bored."

The Winchesters weren't the only people present who greeted that pronouncement with a raised eyebrow.

Gabriel shrugged. "Okay, Teal'c thought there was a chance you might need me. Castiel probably won't wake up for another few hours anyway."

McKay scoffed audibly. "_That_ is an _archangel_?"

In reply, Gabriel snapped his fingers, and the black mug that McKay was reaching for turned into something big, round, and orange. McKay yelped and flung himself away from the table at the same time that Ronon Dex sprang to his feet and aimed a funky-looking gun at the transformed object.

Sam frowned. "A grapefruit?"

"Citrus allergy," Sheppard explained. "Sit down, Ronon."

The dreadlocked Satedan reluctantly lowered his weapon and sat down as Zelenka picked up the fruit and sniffed at it, then handed it to Teyla Emmagan. The Athosian woman examined it carefully before setting it back on the table, well away from McKay. "It does appear to be a real grapefruit," she reported.

"That's not possible," McKay spluttered, his voice rising half an octave.

"Demon zombie virus," Ronon said pointedly, making his first contribution to the meeting.

Zelenka muttered something to Beckett in Czech; Beckett agreed in Gaelic. Richard Woolsey, the civilian commander of Atlantis, rubbed his forehead as if he felt a migraine coming on.

"Change it back!" McKay demanded.

Gabriel tutted. "Say please."

McKay fumed for a moment, to Sheppard's very great amusement, before letting out a huff and sulkily saying, "St. Gabriel the Archangel, Power of God, change it back, _please_?"

"There's no need to be _that_ formal, Meredith," Gabriel replied and snapped his fingers again.

"Meredith?" Dean guffawed.

"_Can_ it, Winchester," McKay snapped.

"Where did that prayer come from, anyway?" Sheppard wondered as Teyla brought the un-citrused mug back to McKay.

McKay rolled his eyes. "I had a Catholic girlfriend in high school, okay? Shut up. Thanks, Teyla. Oh, and... thank you, Gabriel."

Gabriel smirked, but McKay was too intent on his coffee to notice.

"Focus, people," O'Neill said firmly, though he couldn't hide the amused twinkle in his eyes.

"So you want me to help take down Niveus, right?" Gabriel asked, restarting the conversation he'd derailed. "One riot, one archangel."

"Right," O'Neill nodded.

Gabriel nodded back. "Even without Brady, there are too many stunt demons there for your people to be safe going in alone. I'll need a little time, though, to study the lay of the land and figure out the best way to minimize casualties."

"I can get you the sensor readings from the _Hammond_," Carter offered. "We've managed to calibrate our sensors to isolate the demons' EM signature."

Sam and Dean exchanged a glance, both surprised and impressed.

"That would save me some time," Gabriel agreed. "Thanks, Colonel."

Mitchell leaned forward. "Dr. Lee, you said Niveus has connections to the Trust."

Lee nodded. "Ba'al apparently had Athena invest substantial sums in Niveus stock using Trust fronts. It's not a controlling interest, but it's still enough to get the company to cooperate."

"So if we're looking for other biotech companies that might be compromised, we should probably start with the Trust's investments."

"We have known of a couple of pharmaceutical firms that had ties to the Trust," Daniel recalled. "They should have all been closed down, but there are probably others. We should check for Lucian Alliance ties as well."

"We can give you a list of omens to look for, too," Sam offered. "They won't tell you much, but they will tell you whether or not there's demonic activity in the area."

McKay looked like he was about to make some snide peanut-gallery comment until he realized that Gabriel was looking at him with one eyebrow raised, practically daring him to scoff again. He settled for taking another swig of coffee.

Dean shook his head. "If Lucifer gets his hooks into the Lucian Alliance, we'll really have a mess on our hands."

"Let's worry about one planet at a time," Landry interrupted. "Once you boys put the devil back in his box, we won't have to deal with some of the more disastrous what-ifs we could posit right now."

_That would still leave the slightly less disastrous possibilities_, said the look that passed between Sam and Dean, but neither they nor their symbiotes said anything out loud.

Instead, Dean snuck a wistful glance through the briefing room window down to the active Stargate, the rippling blue light of the event horizon and the orange glow of the chevrons being the only spots of real color in the former missile silo. Something about Atlantis called to him, set off a bone-deep ache of longing. _Just one night off_...

_Wormholes go only one way, Dean_, Dishon reminded him with the mental equivalent of a sad smile. _Atlantis dialed in; you could not get there through this wormhole if you tried. And you know we have to see this through, now that we are this close to a real solution._

_Yeah. I know._ But it was still an effort to drag his attention back to the task at hand.

O'Neill clapped his hands once. "Okay, people. Atlantis, get cracking on this Croatoan vaccine, see how far you can get in twelve hours. Ship commanders, meet in Col. Carter's lab in fifteen to discuss sensor calibrations and surveillance needs. Daniel, Vala, Sam, work with Lee to see if you can track down any other companies that could be compromised. Gabriel and Dean, use Daniel's lab to plan the Niveus takedown; I want a mission briefing when the NID team arrives in an hour."

"That's doable," Gabriel agreed before either Winchester could object.

"All non-essential Gate travel from Earth is suspended until further notice. We reconvene at 2200 for status updates. Dismissed."

Lee stopped the Winchesters as the meeting broke up. "I hate to ask this," the balding scientist said shyly, "but... do you by chance know a Carver Edlund?"

Sam and Dean exchanged a look. "You've read the books," they chorused.

Lee's eyes widened. "You really do talk at the same time. Wow."

Dean blinked. "Y'know, most of the _Supernatural_ fans we've met don't believe we're the real Sam and Dean. Why do you?"

Lee chuckled. "Do you ever watch _Wormhole X-Treme_?"

Dean frowned—he'd never heard of the show before Gabriel had mentioned it after Muncie—but Sam stared. "_You're_ the dwarf scientist?"

Dean turned his frown on Sam. "Dude."

"What? I've caught, like, three episodes. It's stupid."

Lee chuckled again, more self-consciously. "I tried to pitch my character to Martin as a mage. That's my race on _World of Warcraft_. But he said the studio didn't want the fantasy element, so..."

Dean's frown deepened even as Dishon started snickering. "Wait a minute. You're sayin' this TV show is based on the Stargate program?"

"Loosely based," Lee shrugged. "The Air Force thought it gave us plausible deniability. But don't worry," he hastened to add. "The writers don't have access to our mission reports. They won't be writing you into the show."

"Maybe not," Dean replied, "but we can't let _Chuck_ write this one. Apart from the classified material, his fans are gonna flip if they think he's ripping off some weird sci-fi show."

"Yeah, and the Feds will never believe he's just recording his visions about us," Sam added.

Now it was Lee's turn to frown. "I thought the publisher went out of business. He's still writing?"

"Oh, yeah," Sam said, plainly unimpressed. "In fact, his girlfriend's probably editing this conversation as we speak."

* * *

Probability, it turned out, was mostly on Sam's side. Becky Rosen paused in the middle of copy-editing the latest volume of the _Supernatural_ series, _Hammer of the Gods_, and went to the kitchen to talk to the author, nee Chuck Shurley, who was haphazardly preparing lunch.

"Chuck?"

"Yes, Becky?"

"Have you been watching _Wormhole X-Treme_?"

The reluctant prophet blinked. "No. I'd never even heard of it before Gabriel brought it up."

"Well, where'd you get the idea for the wormhole network?"

"You mean the Stargates?"

"Yes. I thought you hated sci-fi."

"I do. That's just what I saw."

Becky bit her lip. "So Sam and Dean really have snakes in their heads?"

Chuck nodded.

"That's gonna make the slash _really_ awkward," she muttered before she could stop herself.

Chuck groaned and, despite the early hour, went to the fridge for a beer.

* * *

Meanwhile, in Atlantis, the four members of Team Sheppard were making their way through the hall that led to McKay's lab. The scientist was surprisingly silent until he caught the looks his teammates were giving him.

"What?"

"You feeling okay?" Ronon asked.

McKay frowned. "Yeah, I'm fine. Why?"

"You're taking this surprisingly well," Sheppard noted. "I would have expected more of a litany about how the whole thing is impossible. Y'know, demons, angels, all that jazz."

"You're not the one who got his coffee turned into a grapefruit."

"That would not have sufficed to convince you in times past," Teyla countered.

McKay sighed. "No, you're right. I'm not convinced it's all real. I think the Winchesters are crazy. But this virus thing, that sounds like it could be a serious threat, demons or no. And the longer we stand around arguing about it, the longer it's going to take me to make sure Carson and Jennifer have what they need to find a vaccine."

There was just enough heat behind that last sentence to assure the others that McKay was genuinely okay and not about to succumb to another bout of Second Childhood.

"Why do you think Carson wants Todd in on this, anyway?" McKay continued.

Sheppard shrugged. "Guess he's the closest thing to a demon we have handy."

"Oh, ha, ha."

"Todd worked with Keller on the gene therapy, right? Or at least stole enough of her data to be able to recreate it on his own, then told her how to fix it."

"So?" Ronon frowned.

"So it stands to reason that he might have a better perspective on whatever weird stuff is in Sam Winchester's blood than Earth doctors would. I'm not saying I'd want him actually treating anybody, but it's not like his knowing about this is a security risk from our end, either."

Teyla nodded. "If Carson is to complete this vaccine in time for it to be useful, he will need all the help he can get."

"I suppose," McKay replied doubtfully. Then he bit his lip and shot a worried look at Sheppard. "You... don't think it's true, do you? About the world ending in three weeks?"

"No," Sheppard said firmly, "because we're _not gonna let it_."

"Not that there's much we can do from here," McKay murmured.

"Just prep that time dilation device, Rodney. We'll worry about what we can and can't do to help Earth later on."

* * *

In the Atlantis infirmary, Beckett, Dr. Jennifer Keller, and the Wraith known as Todd stood staring at a computer screen with almost identical looks of puzzled concentration.

"So we've got the DNA sequences for both Winchester brothers, plus a list of unusual blood proteins," Keller summarized. "The naquadah-marked protein, we know, is from the Tok'ra symbiote. They've both got the ATA gene and an allele for this gene on the seventh chromosome that the database doesn't recognize. Sam's got a couple of the same genetic markers we found in Davos, the seer from Vedeena, and a couple of others that Rodney had when he got stuck in the ascension machine. Everything else is normal for healthy men of their age, except for low concentrations of this protein in Dean's blood and this different protein in Sam's." She pulled up molecular models of the proteins in question. "And there doesn't seem to be any genetic reason for them to be there."

"Sam's contains a surprising amount of methionine and cysteine," Beckett noted. "And quite a few of the other amino acids have been thiolated. I'll wager that's the so-called demon blood."

Todd made a thoughtful noise that would have scared anyone not used to his flanged voice. "It does not appear to be too complex to reproduce."

"Aye, but until we know what it does, we shouldn't plan to use it for our vaccine," Beckett replied. "We've not been told the full story, I'm sure, but the fact that even Sam calls it demon blood... that's none too heartening."

Keller frowned and entered a query into the computer. A quick scan of the database later, and the program highlighted two unidentified antigens in each brother's memory B cells. One was common to both brothers; the other was unique to each. "Huh. Never seen antibodies like that before."

"Perhaps we should examine the third blood sample now," Todd suggested.

"Brady Williams, demoniac," Keller read, frowning. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"According to the Winchesters, he's possessed," Beckett replied. "Though I don't see what that's got to do with his blood work."

Opening the file made the connection clear: the sulfur-laden protein that had appeared in Sam's blood also appeared in Brady's, but in a far higher concentration, along with a handful of unusual sulfur compounds. Brady's DNA did not share any of the genes common to the Winchesters, but one of the gene markers that Sam shared with Davos appeared to have been added artificially and temporarily.

"What kind of creatures are these _demons_, then?" Todd wondered aloud. "Some sulfur-based parasite?"

"No," Beckett sighed. "Evil spirits."

If Todd had had eyebrows, they might well have disappeared into his hairline. The top of the starburst tattoo around his left eye certainly tried to do so as he muttered something to himself in Wraith.


	4. Corporate Raiders

Chapter 4  
Corporate Raiders

"But these sorts of things have been happening _all over_," Vala complained when Sam finished explaining how to track omens of demonic activity.

Sam shrugged. "It's the Apocalypse. There are demons everywhere right now."

"That's why we're checking into companies with ties to the Trust and the Lucian Alliance, to narrow the field," Lee added. "Not only are they more likely to be willing to deal with demons, but combined with the omens, it gives us concrete probable cause for surveillance."

"It's still going to take _ages_," Vala whined even as she turned back to the computer Lee had made available to her.

"At least it's something to do," Daniel remarked dryly. "You can take the Lucian Alliance records; Lee, you take the Trust; I'll take the weather omens; and Sam—"

"Sorry," Gabriel interrupted from the doorway, "I need to borrow Sam for a minute."

Daniel frowned. "That'll leave us short-handed."

"No, it won't." Gabriel snapped his fingers, and the room was suddenly one person fuller.

The newcomer took a startled look around the room before rounding on Gabriel. "You couldn't have _called_ first, ya idjit?"

"Wasn't time," Gabriel replied.

Sam cleared his throat. "This is Bobby Singer; he's a friend of the family. Bobby, this is Dr. Bill Lee, Dr. Daniel Jackson, and Vala Mal Doran."

The grizzled older hunter took off his ever-present gimme cap and bowed slightly to Vala. "Ma'am."

Vala grinned. "I like you."

"I take it you're the Bobby from Sioux Falls?" Daniel said as he and Lee stepped forward to shake hands.

"Yeah. And I'm guessin' Gabriel thinks you need my help with something."

"Omens," Sam explained. "We're trying to find pharmaceutical companies that might be working for Pestilence."

Bobby nodded. "That I can do."

"Thanks, Bobby." Sam patted Bobby on the shoulder and strode off after Gabriel, ignoring the annoyed cursing Bobby was doing under his breath.

Gabriel, for his part, was singing "Accountancy Chantey" from _The Crimson Permanent Assurance_ under _his_ breath as he led the way to the elevator, which probably shouldn't have seemed as funny to Sam as it did. But he did manage not to laugh out loud.

Once the elevator had started its trek up to Level 18, however, Gabriel punched another button, and the elevator stopped between floors.

Sam blinked. "So, what, we're doing _NCIS_ now?"

"We need to talk, Sam," Gabriel said seriously. Sam rolled his eyes, but Gabriel continued, "Two things. One, you have every right to be mad at Brady, but as much as I hate to admit it, Crowley's right about Brady having the location of Pestilence. I couldn't get it out of him before I went back to New Orleans, but I do know that he knows. You can't kill him until we get it. What you _can_ do in the meantime is to help us kill his company and then watch him squirm when he finds out the Croatoan plan's been blown sky-high."

Sam took a deep breath and blew it out again. "Yeah. Okay."

"The second thing is that I agree with Salim—your plan to say yes is nuts; it is beyond risky; its chance of succeeding is slim to none... and we may have to go with it anyway."

Sam blinked. "Really."

"We can discuss the details later, but the one vital point I'll make now is that if you want to have any chance at all, you've got to get your anger under control. Luci's gonna push every one of your buttons to keep you under his thumb; you can't give him a foothold."

"Well, I'm not gonna do it unless we all agree."

"Who's we?"

"You, Cas, Bobby, Dean, Dishon, Salim."

"In that order?"

Sam shot him a Look.

"What about SG-1?"

"Might be better if they don't know about it. Except Teal'c, maybe."

"That sort of secret may not keep," Gabriel noted.

Sam sighed. This was easier when there weren't so many people involved.

Gabriel relented. "Look, let's get Pestilence first. We'll worry about Detroit when we have time."

"Okay."

Gabriel nodded and started the elevator again.

"Why do you need me for this strategy session, anyway?"

Gabriel shrugged. "I don't think any of us are used to planning large-scale stunts for more than four people. The more brains we got workin' on the problem, the better."

"Dude," Dean grinned as Sam and Gabriel walked into Daniel's lab. "Check it out—Col. Carter really did get the sensors to isolate a demon's EM signature. This is _awesome_."

"Whaddaya got, Abs?" Gabriel asked in a tolerable impression of Mark Harmon.

Dean blinked. "_NCIS_?"

"Humor him," Sam sighed.

Dean rolled his eyes and started pointing out the layout of the Niveus complex. "Corporate offices and labs are here. Manufacturing is here; warehouse is here. Multiple demons in each building—they're the orange dots. Close to a hundred of 'em, looks like."

Gabriel sighed. "We have to hit all three buildings at the same time to avoid giving any of them time to escape into one of our people or to infect civilians with the Croatoan virus. And even I can't be in three places at once."

"You can't make doubles?"

"They aren't that independent." Gabriel shook his head. "We archangels... we're not noticeably subtle, y'know? Easiest thing to do is just smite the whole complex."

"Oh, thank you, Uriel," Dean snarked.

"Can you even smite a housefly right now?" Sam asked with genuine concern.

Gabriel bristled. "I'm not as far gone as Castiel." He paused before conceding, "A five-block radius... might be a stretch."

"Not to mention overkill."

"And a flashing neon sign that says 'Gabriel was here,'" Dean added. "Lucifer might know you survived, but we're better off keeping that fact on the downlow as much as possible. Especially from the God Squad."

"And we need to get samples of the virus out so Beckett'll have something to work with."

"And I promised O'Neill I'd minimize casualties." Gabriel sighed again. "So we need some kind of trap that will cover all three buildings at the same time and keep the demons in place long enough for us to broadcast an exorcism. And it would make sense to snag the virus samples first and send them straight to Atlantis, before the demons can get wise and erase their tracks like they did in Oregon. Broadcasting's easy enough; I can put loudspeakers where they're needed and tie them back to a central PA system. And I can teach Agent Barrett a quick but effective Enochian exorcism. The problem is the trap."

Sam and Dean exchanged a look. Dean raised his eyebrows; Sam nodded, and Dean nodded back.

"What?"

"Do you think you can get in and out of Heaven without being spotted?" Dean asked.

Gabriel frowned. "What for?"

"You knew our buddy Ash, right?"

"Blond guy with the mullet? Lived at Harvelle's Roadhouse?"

"He still does," Sam replied. "Only now it's Upstairs."

Gabriel nodded. "Yeah, I remember him. Why?"

"He might have some useful ideas. Tell him we sent you."

Gabriel considered the suggestion for a moment before nodding once and snapping with both hands, and the Winchesters found themselves back in Nevada—without Teal'c.

"I really wish he'd stop doing that," Dean grumbled and flopped down on the couch.

* * *

Teal'c glanced around the room, surprisingly unfazed at having ridden Angel Air. "Is Daniel Jackson well, Gabriel?"

"Yeah, he's fine," Gabriel shrugged. "He's down in Bill Lee's lab looking up omens. Listen, Teal'c, I'm supposed to be briefing the NID on this Niveus thing at 11, but I gotta go run an errand Upstairs. If I'm not back in time, would you let 'em know?"

Teal'c raised an eyebrow. "Indeed, but I do not know whether they would believe me."

"Ah, don't worry about that. Just tell 'em I'm 'down the hall' or something."

Teal'c looked amused and bowed his head, and Gabriel took off.

Ash was surprisingly easy to find, considering how many souls were in Heaven now as compared to when Gabriel had gone AWOL; his hacking had left traces visible only to an archangel, though it was a cinch neither Michael nor Raphael had bothered to notice them. He was also surprisingly unaware when Gabriel entered the Roadhouse. Granted, Gabriel was adept at hiding from just about anyone and was as close to invisible as he could possibly be while he made his way to his destination, but Ash had his back to the door, and so intent was he on studying whatever he was doing on his homemade laptop that he was barely paying attention to the PBR in his hand, never mind anything else.

"Knock, knock," Gabriel said brightly.

Ash jumped and cursed, then spun to face the intruder. His mouth worked in astonishment for a moment before he managed to say, "You're Gabriel."

"Got it in one, Ash."

"Why are you here?"

"Need to take down a company that's swarming with demons, and I'm a little under the weather today. Sam and Dean thought you might have some ideas for me."

"Sam 'n' Dean." Ash nodded once. "Okay. Lemme..."

His computer let out a series of beeps that sounded like frantic Morse code. Ash frowned at it, rapidly clicked on several somethings Gabriel couldn't see, and turned back with an enigmatic grin.

"What?"

"I may not be a general, _compadre_, but there are two outside who'd like a word."

And before Gabriel could reply that that might not be a good idea, Ash retrieved a piece of chalk from the pool table, scrawled a sigil on the door, and opened it to let in a stream of people in... SGC uniforms.

George Hammond. Jacob Carter. Janet Fraiser. Charles Kawalsky. Elizabeth Weir. Aiden Ford. Peter Grodin. Marshall Sumner. The original Carson Beckett. Martouf. Sha're. Drey'auc. Shau'nac. Easily a hundred people whose names Gabriel had heard mentioned or gleaned from memories at the SGC crowded into the Roadhouse, which grew to hold them all, and when Gabriel turned to ask Ash how he'd managed it, he saw that Ash had _also_ rounded up Pamela Barnes and a handful of other hunters, who were standing behind the bar. John and Mary Winchester and the Harvelle family were conspicuously absent, but Gabriel already knew from Sam and Dean that Ash simply couldn't find them.

Once everyone was in place and the door was closed, Ash erased the sigil he'd drawn and replaced it with one Gabriel recognized as a lock that would keep other angels out. Ash then nodded to Hammond, who nodded back and stepped up to Gabriel.

"I understand from an ascended friend that our people have an Apocalypse on their hands," the former head of Homeworld Security stated. "How can we help?"

Gabriel grinned. Oh, this raid would be _fun_.

* * *

"Why is he here again?"

NID Agent Malcolm Barrett turned to answer the barely-audible whisper from his driver as they pulled off to find a place to park to set up the Niveus sting, but before he could, the guy who gave his name only as Gabriel said from the very back of the surveillance van, "Y'know, I wish people would stop asking me that."

And then he disappeared. While the van was still moving and the doors were still closed.

And then, before anyone in the van could truly react, he was back, holding two vials of... something. "Evidence bags?" he asked.

One of the junior agents quickly handed him two evidence bags, into which he slid whatever he was holding, and took a picture before Gabriel popped both bags into a biohazard box, scribbled something on top, and snapped his fingers.

The biohazard box vanished.

"What did you do?" Barrett demanded.

"Got the samples sent off to Atlantis," Gabriel replied calmly. "So much for the easy part."

Barrett stared. "What's the hard part?"

"Blowing up a warehouse without anybody noticing."

* * *

Lost in thought, Todd rested his hand on the table next to the laptop in front of him—then hissed and jerked the hand away as a biohazard container appeared millimeters from his fingertips. "Where did that come from?" he roared.

Keller and Beckett turned and started. "Where _did_ that come from?" Keller echoed.

Beckett crossed the space between his computer and Todd's in a few brisk strides and read the note on the top of the box:

_Analyze these quickly and destroy them. – G._

"Gabriel," Beckett announced and hurried the box to the virology lab next door.

Fortunately, one of the pieces of Ancient technology the virologists used regularly was extremely sensitive, capable of obtaining nearly instantaneous results, and able to scan the contents of the biohazard box without it even being opened. In the five minutes it took to prepare both the raw Croatoan sample and the vial of vaccine for more conventional analysis with Earth technology, they had degraded too much to give useable results.

"It's got some kind of kill switch," Beckett reported when he returned to Keller and Todd. "That could explain why the blood samples in River Grove suddenly became clean. Not even the reverse transcriptase held together for more than ten minutes."

Keller frowned. "Were you able to get any results at all?"

"Aye. The same unidentified virus showed up in both samples." Beckett pulled up the virus structure on the computer with the largest screen. "It's a spherical RNA retrovirus with a diameter of 120 nanometers, and it's nearly as sulfur-studded as the demon blood protein. Looks a wee bit like HIV from the outside, to be honest."

"Also looks like some strains of flu if you're not looking closely. Makes sense that they'd hide it in a flu vaccine."

"If I were to design such a virus," said Todd mildly, "it would be more like your immunodeficiency virus than like influenza, but one that acts quickly and would resist known viral inhibitors."

Both Keller and Beckett tried not to look too disturbed by that comment as Keller opened her viral-action simulation program.

* * *

Precisely on schedule, Dr. Nicholas Rush set the long-range communication stone on its base on the Ancient ship _Destiny_, felt the jolt as it shifted his consciousness across billions of light years to Earth, and opened borrowed eyes in the Pentagon headquarters of Homeworld Security.

"Dr. Rush?" asked the sergeant standing guard over him.

"Yes."

"I'm sorry, sir, but we won't be able to allow you to leave the building at this time."

Rush frowned. "Why? What's going on?"

The sergeant looked a little sheepish. "It's the Apocalypse, sir."

Rush's frown deepened. "Let me speak to Gen. O'Neill."

"He's at the SGC, sir..."

But Rush wasn't listening. He stormed out of the stone room and into O'Neill's office, which was empty, and then into the situation room, where Maj. Paul Davis intercepted him.

"I'm sorry, Dr. Rush, but we kind of have our hands full—"

"Major, what the devil's going on here?"

"The devil is exactly what's going on here. We got word from the Tok'ra last week that the world's about to end."

"You can't be serious."

Davis shrugged. "So far all their intel has checked out. The NID's about to raid a biotech company that's developed a virus that turns people into zombies."

The Scottish mathematician scoffed. "Major, you can't expect me to believe—"

"Major!" interrupted Chief Master Sergeant Walter Harriman. "We're picking up an energy spike around Niveus!"

Davis turned to a large viewscreen, which Rush had only briefly noticed was full of orange and white life-sign readings. A line of life signs at the edge of the screen was composed mainly of red dots, denoting the subcutaneous transmitters of Homeworld Security personnel, but one bright blue dot stood out among them. Before Rush could ask what it meant, however, the screen blazed white as the orange and white life signs were surrounded by what looked like a five-pointed star inside a circle.

And all the orange life signs froze.

"What the hell?" several people asked at once.

"It's a devil's trap," drawled the voice of an older man, and Rush turned to see that it belonged to a civilian visible on a feed from the SGC briefing room. The man looked for all the world like a mechanic from some Midwestern backwater. "Damned if I know how he did it, but that's what it is."

Rush looked back at the main screen and stared at the design for a moment before his attention was drawn to the blue dot again. It was moving.

* * *

Barrett was still staring in disbelief as Gabriel, after standing outside and staring thoughtfully at the Niveus complex for close to a minute, snapped his fingers and climbed back into the van with both hands full of speaker cables that presumably went to speakers that... they hadn't brought with them.

"What are those for?" he finally managed to ask.

"PA system," Gabriel stated, handing the cables to another agent, who started dutifully plugging them into the van's machinery. Gabriel then picked up a notepad and pen. "Had to use wires for the EM shielding. What, weren't you paying attention at the briefing?"

"You really expect me to conduct an exorcism?"

"Bingo. Do you speak Ancient?"

Barrett blinked. "No."

"Didn't think so." Gabriel wrote something in big block letters before handing the notepad to Barrett. "This is Enochian. Pronounce it like it's ecclesiastical Latin and you'll be fine."

Barrett stared at the paper. It was four words that looked like nonsense. But Gabriel shoved a microphone into his hand, so he cleared his throat and read the words.

And the ground shook.

"Hold tight," Gabriel said. "It's rush hour. Don't worry; it'll stop in a few seconds."

That didn't make any sense, but the rumbling did indeed stop a few seconds later.

Gabriel snapped his fingers, and the words on the page, the speaker cables, and the microphone vanished. And then someone whom Barrett could have _sworn_ was Gen. Hammond poked his head in the back door of the van and said, "It's all clear."

"Thanks, George," Gabriel nodded, and the Hammond lookalike (Barrett refused to think _ghost_) disappeared. "Malcolm, you might want to get in there while the civilians are still in shock."

_I think __I'm__ still in shock_, Barrett wanted to retort, but instead he climbed out of the van, took a few deep breaths, and started barking orders.

* * *

Rush was reeling. He'd just watched all those orange life signs—there must have been a hundred of them—suddenly turn white and start moving again at the same time Harriman had reported that there was a minor earthquake centered on the location they were monitoring, and then the so-called devil's trap had vanished as suddenly as it appeared. "Exorcism," the civilian at the SGC had informed them.

"Anything else they need to be aware of, Mr. Singer?" Gen. O'Neill asked him as the red life signs started moving in on the company.

Mr. Singer scratched his beard as he studied the screen and shrugged. "Don't look like it from here, but I ain't used to bein' able to _see_ the EM signatures of stuff like that. Long as Gabriel stays with 'em, though, they should be okay, even if Pestilence shows up."

The man even spoke like a mechanic. It was uncanny.

Davis noticed Rush's shell-shocked expression and said, "Ah, Dr. Rush, it might be a good idea for you to head back to the _Destiny_."

Rush nodded absently. "Aye, you may be right."

"Is that Dr. Rush?" O'Neill called. "Rush, tell Col. Young we're suspending the use of the stones for the next month, just until we get... all this taken care of."

Rush nodded again. "Aye, I will. Good day, General." And he walked away while Mr. Singer said something about researching omens.

The sergeant who'd been in the stone room escorted him back and waited while he switched off the power to the stones on the Earth end. Another jolt, and he was back in his own body on the _Destiny_, sitting in the mess with Col. Everett Young standing over him in concern.

"Rush?"

"Aye, I'm here."

Young sat down across from him. "What happened? Airman Hornsby said something about an apocalypse."

Rush shook his head. "Not _an_ apocalypse. _The_ Apocalypse. Stone use is suspended for the next month. I assume Gate travel is as well." He rubbed his forehead as if he had a lingering headache—maybe he actually did, or was getting one. "Bloody hell..."

"You okay?"

"I've just seen a hundred demons exorcised at once. No, I'm bloody well not okay."

Young sighed and looked over Rush's shoulder. "Becker?"

"Yes, sir," replied the mess sergeant and went to get Rush a cup of what passed for coffee on this side of the universe.

* * *

.

* * *

A/N: I would assume the following goes for SPN-verse archangels as well: "Do not meddle in the affairs of assassins, for we are heavily armed and quick to anger. And not noticeably subtle." – Acacia Byrd, _Protectors of the Plot Continuum_

Most SPN fic I've read refers to Bobby's hat as a "trucker hat," but where I'm from, caps of that sort (from feed stores, etc.) are called "gimme caps" because they're often given away to customers.

Did you know that _The Crimson Permanent Assurance_ was one of Matt Frewer's first roles? It didn't register for me until I watched it again to try to find an appropriate joke to work into this chapter. (Frewer, for the SG-1-only crowd, played Pestilence on SPN.)

And another fic rec: "The Afterlife and Times of Dr. Badass" by the red feather. Ash's side of "Mystery Spot" alone is worth the reading.


	5. Backfield in Motion

Chapter 5  
Backfield in Motion

Dean was sound asleep on the couch when it suddenly registered that his phone had rung and Dishon had answered. Given that the words filtering through to Dean's returning awareness were in Goa'uld, Dean concluded the Tok'ra must be talking to Teal'c.

"Dean is awake," Dishon said suddenly. "I shall let him speak to you."

"Thank you," Teal'c replied.

"Hey, T," said Dean. "What's happening?"

"The mission was successful. Gabriel has sent captured samples of the virus to Atlantis, and the rest has been destroyed. Agent Barrett and the NID are concluding the federal actions that were discussed this morning."

"Any casualties?"

"None."

Dean couldn't help grinning at that. "Awesome."

"Indeed. Gabriel has returned to New Orleans. He sends his thanks for sending him to Ash and renews his promise to call you should Castiel awaken. He also asked me to remind you to be wary of Crowley."

_We should retrieve a zat'ni'katel from the car_, Dishon suggested, and Dean agreed.

"O'Neill requests that you attempt to learn from Brady whether any other companies are manufacturing the tainted vaccine."

"That'll be easier than getting the location of Pestilence," Dean grumbled. "But yeah, we'll do that."

He could almost hear Teal'c's faintly pleased expression and bow of the head. "I shall call again if we receive more information on our end."

"Thanks, T." Dean hung up.

Sam sat forward on the hearth. "How'd it go?"

"Like clockwork. No casualties."

Sam heaved a quiet sigh of relief.

"O'Neill wants us to get more info from Brady about other compromised companies." Dean stood. "I'm gonna go grab a zat just in case one of them tries anything."

"One of them meaning..."

"Crowley."

Sam nodded once, and Dean went out to the car. The zats were buried under the throwing stars, but it didn't take him long to find one and clip its holster, which had been modified by Bobby, to the back waistband of his jeans in such a way that it neither showed under his overshirt and jacket nor pressed against his handgun. He also tucked a hand device into his jacket pocket just in case. Sam was waiting for him at the door, and without another word, they went to taunt Brady.

"Who was that?" Crowley asked as the brothers walked into the interrogation room.

"That," Dean answered, looking at Brady, "was Murray. Seems the Feds got a tip that Niveus was a front for a massive bio-terror operation. Company's been shut down, assets frozen, samples of the Croatoan virus seized for analysis, _and_ the entire stock of tainted swine flu vaccine destroyed. And there's a BOLO out for one Mr. Brady Williams, a person of interest in the NID's investigation."

Brady paled and shook his head. "You're lying. People like you don't have friends in Washington."

Dean smirked. "Never said I _had_ friends in Washington."

"Why else would the Feds supposedly listen to you?"

"Tip might have come from Murray. Or Loki."

"Where is Loki, anyway?" Sam asked.

"Went back to New Orleans. Told Murray he'd call us."

Sam inclined his head.

Brady was still shaking his head. "No. No, you're lying. Washington wouldn't believe you, and the Feds could never overcome that many demons."

Sam turned calmly to Crowley. "You get wireless Internet out here?"

Crowley snorted. "How would I know that, mate? Computers hate me; I use my phone. Haven't you got a Blackberry?"

"Yeah. The laptop just has a bigger screen." Sam pulled his Blackberry out of his pocket and quickly found an AP news wire flash about the raid, then held it out for Brady to read the headline.

Brady's confidence was clearly crumbling, but still he whispered, "No... no, it can't be..."

"Oh," Dean added smoothly, "I almost forgot. Seems you and Murray have a mutual friend."

Brady looked up at him warily. "Who?"

"Colonel Cameron Mitchell, United States Air Force. Said to tell you he always said the Trust was bad news."

Dean had always thought "A Whiter Shade of Pale" was bad poetry, but it was the only phrase to describe the color Brady turned.

"Your goose," Sam stated, "is well and truly cooked."

Brady rallied at that. "Pestilence can still create havoc on his own. He doesn't need our vaccine for that. And I'm dead whether I tell you anything or not. So I think I'll die on the winning side, thanks."

The Winchesters and Crowley exchanged a look at that and filed back into the living room.

"You thinkin' what I'm thinkin'?" Dean asked Sam as he plonked himself back down on the couch.

"Yeah," Sam nodded. "We should call Murray."

"Right, then," Crowley sighed. "While you do that, I'll go stick my neck out."

Dean frowned. "What do you mean? What are you gonna do?"

"Exactly the kind of desperate swashbuckle I've been trying to avoid. Now I kick open a hive of demons." He turned to leave, then turned back. "This whole bloody ring business better work."

Before Dean could do more than shrug, Crowley vanished.

Sam had his communication stone out in a flash. "Winchester to _Odyssey_, come in."

Dean blinked. Teal'c was still at the SGC. The _Odyssey_...

_Is Col. Mitchell's ship_, Dishon supplied, _and has probably completed the sensor calibrations already_.

_Oh. Well, that makes sense, I guess_.

Dean didn't have his stone active, so he could hear only Sam's side of the conversation. "Yes, Colonel... well, the way he phrased it, we can't be sure, but it sounds like Niveus is the only company compromised. The only one stateside, anyway." There was a pause; then Sam repeated what Brady had said about Pestilence and paused again. "No, Crowley's got something up his sleeve. There's nothing more we can do from here." A long pause, occasionally broken by "Yes, sir" and "No, sir," and the call finally ended with "Got it. Winchester out."

"Col. Mitchell?" Dean asked as Sam put his stone away.

Sam nodded. "_Odyssey_ and _Daedalus_ will scan for demons at the other suspect companies just to be safe, but if they can't find anything by tonight, they'll tell Atlantis the pressure's off. Mitchell said Gen. O'Neill just wants us to find Pestilence."

"Wonder if there's a way to scan for the Horsemen's rings," Dean mused. "Would save us a lot of time."

"Guess you could ask Col. Carter," Sam shrugged. Then he paused. "D'ya think Crowley's gonna be a while?"

"Hard to tell. Why?"

"I, um... need to call Bobby."

Dean frowned, but before he could ask why, his phone rang—"Laugh" by the Monkees.

"Appropriate," Sam grinned.

Dean rolled his eyes and answered. "What?"

"He's awake," Gabriel replied.

Both Dean and Dishon sighed in relief, as did Sam when Dean repeated the news to him. "Can I talk to him?"

"Sure. Hold on."

There was a slight pause before Castiel's muzzy voice said, "Dean?"

"Yeah, buddy, it's me. You okay?"

"No."

"Well, look, we're in the middle of somethin' right now, but Gabriel's gonna zap you to Bobby's. Let them take care of you, okay? They'll fill you in, too. We'll get there as soon as we can, probably late tonight, early tomorrow."

"Very well." Castiel paused. "I was very surprised to see Gabriel. Can we trust him?"

Dean chuckled as Gabriel squawked indignantly in the background. "Yeah, Cas. He's officially on Team Free Will."

"I'm glad," was Cas' weary reply. "I'll give the phone back to him."

Gabriel was chuckling fondly when he held the phone to his ear once more. "He's asleep. True sleep, not unconsciousness. I'll get him checked out as soon as a doctor comes by."

"Thanks, Gabe," Dean said sincerely. "I think it means a lot to him to have you there."

"He's my brother," Gabriel replied simply.

"Yeah. I know."

"Hey, any more raids I need to be in on today?"

"Doesn't look like it. But Teal'c knows to call you."

"Okay. How's it going with Brady?"

"Not good. Crowley's gone to find a means of persuasion."

Gabriel snorted and started to say something else, then stopped abruptly. "Nurse is here."

"Okay. See you at Bobby's."

"Right." And Gabriel hung up.

Dean turned to Sam. "Whatever you need to call Bobby about? Save it till we get there."

Sam blew the air out of his cheeks and nodded. "Yeah. Okay."

* * *

"Major Davis!"

Davis hurried across the situation room at Homeworld Command. "What is it, Walter?"

Harriman didn't look away from his console as he reported, "The demon Col. Carter used to calibrate the sensors just jumped to Sioux Falls."

But no sooner had Davis turned to the main viewscreen than the orange life sign in Sioux Falls vanished and reappeared in Arizona in the middle of a mass of similar but weaker life signs.

"Zoom in on that spot," Davis ordered.

Harriman started to comply, but before he could, one of the orange dots—_stunt demons_, Gabriel had called them—teleported to someplace in the middle of Nebraska that was marked with a purple dot. Davis had noticed it before but hadn't asked its significance.

"What's the purple life sign?"

"That's Lucifer, sir."

Davis cursed. "Get me Gen. O'Neill."

"Yes, sir."

And as he waited for O'Neill to answer the phone, Davis wasn't sure what was more disturbing, the fact that the stunt demon in Nebraska looked likely to stay put, that the other stunt demon life signs in Arizona began disappearing and not reappearing elsewhere, or that Homeworld Command knew of only one reason Crowley would have gone to Sioux Falls.

* * *

"Crowley came _here?_" Gabriel frowned as Bobby finished making up a bed for Castiel, who was still asleep but whom Gabriel had dressed in his usual suit and trench coat before spiriting him out of the hospital. Teal'c and Bobby had been beamed down from the _Hammond_ just seconds after the angels had arrived to find the house empty.

"Indeed," Teal'c replied. "It appears that he was unaware that Bobby Singer was at the SGC."

"Yeah, thanks to those sigils you carved on me," Bobby agreed, holding back the top sheet. "Dunno why we didn't think to ask Cas to do that sooner."

"Well, Mike never had designs on you," Gabriel noted. "So far, Death's the only one who's tried to use you to get to the Winchesters." He set Castiel gently on the bed and sighed, then looked at Bobby sharply as he made the connection. "Death. He wanted you to make a deal for Death's coordinates."

"Why the hell would I go for that?"

"Well, you're the only Winchester who hasn't risked his soul yet. Apart from the snakes, that is."

Bobby glared at him.

"He does not know that you have regained full mobility," Teal'c observed. "Perhaps he expects you to be without hope of aiding the Winchesters in any other way."

"That sounds like Crowley," Gabriel agreed. "Might even swear 'it's a loan, I'll give it back' to make sure Sam won't kill him. But he never lets anyone read the fine print."

Bobby sighed. "Well, nobody I know has come up with omens we could follow to get to Death. If I hadn't seen that mission to Niveus, I wouldn't think we had a chance of finding Death another way."

Teal'c looked expectantly at Gabriel, but the angel shook his head. "Sorry, big guy. I'm far enough off the grid that I can't sense the Horsemen with any accuracy from a distance. Neither can Castiel."

Teal'c thought for a moment. "I believe the sensors of our fleet ought to be able to detect Death once we have a life-sign reading for Pestilence."

Bobby grinned. "I knew I liked you for a reason."

Teal'c bowed his head with a smile.

"Carter's on the _Hammond_ still, right?" Gabriel asked.

"Indeed," said Teal'c.

Gabriel snapped his fingers and sent Teal'c to the ship.

"Why do you snap your fingers around us?" Bobby wondered. "It's not like we don't know who you are. We're used to angel mojo."

"Force of habit," Gabriel shrugged. "I think I watched _The Court Jester_ one too many times."

"Idjit," said Bobby, amused.

"So Luci's in Nebraska."

"'Swhat Davis said. And it looks like Crowley sent him a message." Bobby paused. "Any way you can find out what that message was?"

Gabriel sighed. "'Fraid not. No point worrying about it now, anyway. The only way our plans might be affected is if Luci's found out about Homeworld Command, and the only way we'll know for sure about _that_ is if O'Neill gets an unwelcome visitor."

"Hate bein' on defense."

"Yeah. Me, too."

"Bobby?" Castiel suddenly interrupted.

Bobby immediately sat down on the side of the bed. "Hey, Cas."

Puzzled blue eyes blinked at Bobby, at Gabriel, at the room, at Bobby again. "You have been healed?"

Bobby chuckled. "Boys brought me a present from the far side of the galaxy."

Castiel's puzzled frown deepened. "Is that a joke?"

"Go back to sleep, Castiel," Gabriel said with a twinkle. "We'll explain it when you're more awake."

"Okay." Castiel let his eyes drift closed again.

Gabriel's smile turned sad, and Castiel was suddenly in flannel pajamas. Bobby patted the archangel's shoulder and steered him out of the room.

* * *

It had just occurred to Dean to mention to Sam that Bobby might still be at the SGC when Crowley returned, his suit looking rather worse for wear. He was in the hall, and Sam and Dean couldn't hear what he said to them, but they followed him into the interrogation room just in time to hear Brady ask warily, "What did you do?"

Crowley informed Brady that he'd massacred a group of demons (which didn't make sense to Dishon, given that the only two non-angelic weapons known to be capable of such a feat were in the Winchesters' possession) but that he'd let one live and given it the impression that Brady was at fault for the Niveus raid "because you and I are—wait for it—Lovers in League against Satan." As a result, Crowley said, Brady had joined him on Lucifer's eternal torment list, so he might as well give up the location of Pestilence.

Dishon didn't believe a word of it, and Dean... just wasn't sure.

Brady was clearly winding up for another round of snark when a hound bayed in the distance. Everyone froze—even the symbiotes.

"Was that a hellhound?" Dean asked quietly, and Dishon was suddenly bombarded with memories from Dean's death two years before, his time in Hell, the assault on Carthage.

"I'd say, yeah," Crowley nodded.

"Why was that a hellhound?"

Crowley put his hand into the inside pocket of his coat and sighed as he found something there. "Remember I was telling you about my crafty little tracking device?" He held up what looked like a very old coin.

"Get me out of here, and I'll tell you anything you want," Brady said quickly, and his fear sounded genuine.

"Shut up," Sam snapped.

"We should go," said Dean.

"Sorry, boys," Crowley replied. "Nobody knows more about the hounds than I. We're well past the point of car." And he flipped the coin toward Dean and vanished.

In the same instant, Dishon seized control, pulled the zat out of Dean's back holster, and shot the coin three times before it could even hit the ground. The hellhound bayed again, but there was a note of confusion in its voice.

Brady stared. "What did you just do?"

Dishon turned the zat on Brady and stunned him before giving control back to Dean, and after a round of I-told-you-sos, Dean went to the kitchen to find some salt and collect his shotgun while Sam untied Brady. Dean just managed to get a salt line poured across the doorway to the interrogation room when the hellhound burst through the front door. It snarled and snuffled and paced, searching for a way into the room, but it didn't have time to find it before a thoroughly smug and no longer disheveled Crowley turned up with his own, much larger hellhound and sicced it on the one in the front hall.

Sam picked up Brady while Dean used his pocketknife to break the devil's trap. Then, with Sam covering him, Dean used the hand device to bust out one of the windows, and they carried Brady out and dumped him in the back seat of the Impala. Crowley joined them, cackling, and they sped off into the east.

They were just rounding the Great Salt Lake when Brady came to. Dean called Bobby to let him know what was happening, then pulled off by a boat ramp and marched Brady out to the water's edge. The demon was not impressed, but he pulled a notebook out of his jacket pocket and wrote something down while Crowley and Sam came up behind them.

"This is where he'll be two days from now," Brady said, pulling the page out of the notebook and handing it to Crowley.

"Sure about that, are you?" Crowley asked.

"Yeah, I'm sure. Pestilence will be there."

"What do you think?" Dean asked Crowley.

Crowley looked at the paper, nodded, and handed it to Dean. "It's good. You've got no reason to lie, have you?" he added over his shoulder to Brady.

Dean pocketed the paper and took the can of rock salt from a stone-faced Sam while Brady and Crowley engaged in one last round of snark. Then he began pouring a salt line across the ramp.

_Will Sam push Brady into the lake? _Dishon wondered.

Dean managed not to snort audibly. _That'd be cruel and unusual, and it wouldn't kill him. The salt water's just there to keep him from escaping._

_I see._ Dishon paused. _Gabriel is here—and Teal'c is with him._

_Good. They can take care of Crowley_.

"I expect we'll be in touch," said demon whispered to Sam, who didn't react, and walked around Dean and through the gap between the incomplete salt line and the edge of the boat ramp.

_Got half a mind to shove __him__ in the lake_, Dean added with a glare at the retreating black-clad back, and Dishon agreed.

* * *

Crowley was a cautious demon. He had to be, to have climbed as high in Hell's bureaucratic hierarchy as he had, to have _survived_ as long as he had. He knew every hunter's trick, every churchman's chant, every arcane scribble imaginable—and how to avoid them or get out of them if trapped. Even the hellhound coin wasn't the surprise he'd claimed; he'd picked it up as the final trump card to pull on Brady, and it had worked. (He had, however, slaughtered most of the demons in that Arizona nest because they, like Brady, were under the impression that he was a traitor.)

So he was not expecting to walk past the Impala and stick faster than a sabretooth in La Brea, caught in a trap he couldn't even see.

"See!"

"Indeed."

Crowley wanted to spin and face the obviously amused individuals behind him, to snarl curses at Loki and threaten Murray with torments even Alastair hadn't imagined... but he couldn't move a single muscle, not even in his borrowed face. His hearing, though, seemed to be sharpened—even though he was out of mortal earshot of the Winchesters, he could hear what was happening behind the salt line:

"All those angels, all those demons... they just don't get it, do they, Sammy?"

"No, they don't, Dean."

"You see, Brady, _we're_ the ones you should be afraid of."

Brady hurled invective and insult at Sam, but the hunter didn't seem to react at all until Crowley heard the unmistakable sound of the demon-killing knife plunging into Brady's chest and the demon inside sparking as it died.

And then there was a shift in the atmosphere that Crowley had learned to associate with the shift in the Winchesters' personalities, followed by the sound of boots coming up the boat ramp. It wasn't long before there were four silent presences behind him.

"We have been keeping an eye on you today, Crowley," Loki announced as he strolled around to face the frozen demon, followed by the hunters. "Turns out, you've given us not only valuable intelligence, but several chances to run some very fruitful experiments. We also happen to know that you may not be quite the lone wolf you wanted Sam and Dean to think you are. 'Course, they're not quite what you think _they_ are, and neither is Bobby, so fair's fair."

If frozen looks could kill, Loki would have been as dead as Odin currently was.

"But hey, anything for science, right? Except science and the supernatural aren't quite as incompatible as your side wants everyone to believe. Then again, we can't let your pals know that we know that, can we, Teal'c?"

"Indeed," said Murray (why would Loki call him _Teal'c_?). "Many of the Tau'ri may be in your debt, but I am not."

"Nor are the Tok'ra," said Dean's alter-ego.

"And me?" Loki smirked. "Let's just say I think you've earned a moment of true-sight."

Suddenly the image of the Winchesters' souls doubled and shifted until they were overlaid by the images of other, separate, older souls, seemingly dressed in brown leather—and _these_ were the ones with glowing eyes and strange voices. Murray's street clothes gave way to flowing robes, and his forehead bore the gleaming mark of Apophis, but at his feet lay a heavy chain... broken three times over. There were other souls nearby, too, souls of the redeemed who seemed to be adding power to the trap that was holding him. And Loki...

Loki wasn't Loki anymore. He was taller than the hunters, robed in white, shining like the midsummer sun at noonday, his trademark smirk now crossing a face more terrible than he'd seen since... since...

... and his _wings_...

... and there was _definitely_ a family resemblance...

"But of course," that voice continued, "this is all highly classified. So now that I've shown you, I'm afraid I have to kill you."

As the sword of the archangel Gabriel ran him through, Crowley's last fleeting thought was, _I might have known._

* * *

"Should we let Mitchell do the honors?" Dean asked as he emptied out the container of lighter fluid.

"I offered," Sam replied, capping the can of rock salt. "He said he didn't think he could."

Gabriel flicked his wrist, and fire claimed the remains of a former Stanford pre-med student and a former New York literary agent.

Then the angel winced and put a hand on his week-old stab wound. At Dean and Teal'c's questioning glance and Sam's look of open concern, he sighed. "Maybe I should ride with you. It's been a long day."

Dean checked his watch and swore. "We've got to be at that briefing in five minutes."

Teal'c very calmly radioed the _Hammond_, and Carter agreed to leave the Impala in the 302 bay until the meeting was over, even suggesting that she assign a detail to find and destroy the tracking coin. Five minutes later, everyone whose presence was expected at the Atlantis check-in was in place, and Gabriel had snagged a box of Cracker Jacks from the vending machine to start rebuilding his energy.

* * *

.

* * *

A/N: "Backfield in motion" is an American football term—only one player may move around behind the line of scrimmage before the ball is snapped—that's used in a 1969 song to describe the "illegal move" of a girl cheating on her boyfriend. "BOLO" stands for "Be on the lookout"; it's similar to an APB. (I'd never heard the term until I started watching _NCIS_.)

"Well past the point of car" is an awkward phrase that isn't mine; it's one of a few lines from "The Devil You Know" that I've borrowed (and I did try to keep said borrowing to a minimum). What Crowley means is that they can't get away from the hellhound by driving.


	6. Take It Easy

Chapter 6  
Take It Easy

Dean was beginning to understand why Gabriel hated debriefings. After ten minutes of hearing a recap of everything he already knew, he was about ready to run down to the Gateroom and throw himself into the event horizon, even knowing that he wouldn't go anywhere, just to have something to do. He was rather studiously not looking at the part of the viewscreen that showed the space vampire with white hair and green skin and a weird voice that somehow reminded him of Alastair. The thing was more curious about Sam anyway—and Dean had no idea how he knew that unless it was a telepath of some kind. The Tok'ra weren't exactly up on Wraith lore.

Then a now-familiar voice broke into his thoughts:

_I'm a lonely little petunia in an onion patch, an onion patch, an onion patch..._

Dean very nearly lost it. _Where the hell did you learn __that__ song?_

_You__ learned it in the third grade_, Dishon shot back_. Winslow, Arizona._

Dean had pretty well forgotten the case that had taken them to Winslow and was too tired to try to recall it now, so he retaliated with the next logical association: _It's a girl, my Lord, in a flat-bed Ford, slowing down to take a look at me!_

Dishon laughed and joined in the chorus on the harmony line, a sure sign that the Tok'ra was as punchy and bored as his host. Gabriel shot them an amused glare and a piece of popcorn, which Dean caught and ate, and Sam nudged Dean as Beckett started speaking from Atlantis.

"We're still in the process of analyzing the virus' DNA," Beckett was saying. "We've managed to isolate the antigen in Sam's blood sample that we believe is responsible for his immunity, but so far we've not been able to determine whether it's even possible to construct a vaccine that would create the same response in an average person's immune system."

Dean noted Beckett's use of _average_ rather than _normal_ and decided that he owed the man a bottle of Scotch.

"Well, it looks like we've headed off the epidemic for now," O'Neill replied. "Niveus made the ten o'clock news, so even if there are other pharmaceutical firms still willing to lace their swine flu vaccines with Croatoan, the public's too spooked to fall for it."

"And we'll have Pestilence stopped within 48 hours," Sam added.

"You know where he is, then?"

"Not where he is now," Dean explained. "But we do know where he'll be in two days." He fished the paper out of his pocket and read it: "Serenity Valley Convalescent Home, Davenport, Iowa."

O'Neill nodded. "Mitchell, you check it out from the air. Daniel, Vala, check its records. I want to get as much information on this place as possible before we move in."

"Who's we?" the Winchesters chorused.

Daniel cleared his throat apologetically. "Jack, sending a government strike force into a nursing home... kind of looks bad, wouldn't you say? I mean, it's not like Niveus, a big bad corporation where one of the executives went missing just before an anonymous tip came in about terrorist activity. It's going to be awfully hard to justify."

"Not only that," continued Gabriel, "but it's going to be exceptionally hard to keep Pestilence from killing anyone who goes in there. The Horsemen are far more powerful than any other being you've encountered today except me. And I'm not even at the top of my game. Brady was right; Pestilence doesn't need Croatoan to create havoc. Any bacterium will do."

"We'll be safe enough as Tok'ra," Sam noted. "But we shouldn't risk anyone else's life."

O'Neill nodded slowly. "Okay. Then I want to get as much information on this place as possible before _you_ move in. Fair enough?"

"Fair enough," Dean nodded.

Apropos of nothing, Dishon started humming "Bohemian Rhapsody."

_Stop that!_

But it was too late. O'Neill had moved on to some other topic, and Dean's concentration was shot. He was exhausted; his baby was on a spaceship; they had two days before they went to catch Pestilence; and Dean wanted nothing more at the moment than to get to Bobby's, check on Cas, and sleep for as long as Dishon could keep the nightmares at bay. Well, and get drunk, but that was kind of out of the question now that he was Tok'ra.

Gabriel shook the last peanut out of his Cracker Jack box and threw it at the ceiling. Dean heard it hit... and then sensed it turning into naquadah, flowing out across the ceiling, and bonding to the reinforced concrete above the door in a pattern he knew well.

_Is that..._

_Key of Solomon_, Dean informed his symbiote. _Demon won't be able to break __that__ trap very easily._

O'Neill and Caldwell both shivered involuntarily but didn't look around. Daniel and Carter both looked up and tried to make out what Gabriel had done while Teal'c forestalled a question from Vala with a slight head shake. Todd, too, tried to see what was going on, but the ceiling wasn't visible from the video conference camera's angle. Sam shot Dean a small puzzled frown, and they both glanced at Gabriel, who grimaced. But they didn't have time to wonder further; Dishon sensed a demon's approach just seconds before footsteps in the hall heralded the arrival of someone who wasn't supposed to be at the briefing. O'Neill shot both Winchesters a warning glance that told them not to turn around.

"Can I help you, Mr. Coolidge?" O'Neill asked as the new arrival stalled at the threshold.

_Coolidge?_ Dean frowned.

_Member of the IOA_, Dishon replied. _Not known to be a friend to aliens. And a coward, like most of them._

"Mr. Strom asked me to check up on some rumors," said a weaselly voice, and Dishon pulled up a memory to show that it went with a weasel-faced bureaucrat whose eyes were naturally dark enough that others in the room might not be able to tell if their color changed while he was still in the doorway.

Sam blinked a question, and Dean blinked back a negative and briefly glanced toward Gabriel. Sam reached for his hip flask instead of the knife, and Dean gave him the barest flicker of a wink to indicate his approval. Beside Sam, Teal'c shifted slightly to cover the movement; Sam glanced toward him and blinked another question to Dean, who winked again.

"Rumors?" O'Neill returned mildly. "What sorts of rumors?"

Coolidge shifted awkwardly, but the Key of Solomon was too large for him to squeeze past it. "Unauthorized personnel here at the SGC—men on the FBI Most Wanted list, if my information is correct."

"The only person who's been on this base today without my authorization is _you_."

Sam passed his flask to Teal'c, who unscrewed the lid and hid the flask between his hand and leg.

"Is that so?" Coolidge shot back, lisping slightly through his molars in a way that reminded Dean of Wallace Shawn. "Then tell me, General, who was it that provided the information that led to the Niveus raid?"

Teal'c stood. "Please take my seat, Mr. Coolidge. It is late, and it appears that your feet are causing you pain."

"My feet? Ah, no, really..."

Teal'c quickly threw holy water in the bureaucrat's face, and as the demon within Coolidge screamed and the water steamed away, Teal'c grabbed his arm and pulled him under the Key—and under brighter light, where the total blackness of the demon's eyes was clearly visible as it tried and failed to lunge at Teal'c, who was calmly capping the flask before handing it back to Sam. The Lanteans were on their feet in shock, and every officer in the SGC briefing room had a gun trained on Coolidge.

The demon laughed. "Guns can't hurt me, you morons." And it telekinetically knocked every gun to the ground and threw several people into the walls at the same time.

"Maybe not," Dean snapped as he and Sam finally turned around, "but we can."

"_Winchesters_," it hissed.

But before they could taunt each other further, Gabriel turned and aimed a thoroughly angelic glare at the demon, and it screamed and came out, and the black smoke disappeared through the floor. The exorcised Coolidge collapsed into Teal'c's arms.

"Get him to the infirmary," O'Neill ordered, and Teal'c complied with a nod, followed by a couple of SG team leaders who'd hit the walls rather hard.

"Nice," Dean nodded at Gabriel.

"Ah, that one was bush league," Gabriel shrugged, turning the Cracker Jack box into a large cookie-scented candle to dispel the demon's sulfurous stench. "I was expecting the one you call Meg. But he won't be getting any information to Lucifer for a while, I can promise you that."

"So that is a demon," Todd mused. "Most interesting."

Dean turned back to the camera. "I take it you don't have those out there."

Todd made a noncommittal noise. "Not in my experience. I have heard humans speak of evil spirits, but only those from Earth have spoken of demons. And while I must admit that not all of the Ascended Ones are necessarily... benevolent toward humans, I have never personally encountered a spirit like that one."

"Must be nice."

"Oh, we've got our share of dangers," Sheppard noted with a sidelong glance at Todd. "But so far most of 'em haven't been what you'd call supernatural."

"I don't understand," Woolsey interrupted. "James Coolidge had never seen you before, but that demon _knew_ you."

Dean shrugged. "Hell's Most Wanted. Dead or alive."

"Actually, they want me alive and Dean dead," Sam corrected.

Dean was actually grateful when the conversation was interrupted again, this time by Daniel, who had come around the table and was examining the naquadah embedded in the ceiling. "This is the... Lesser Key of Solomon, right?"

"Ten points to the archaeologist," Gabriel replied. "We're gonna need one of those at every major entrance, including the Gate, and probably a regular devil's trap at every other entrance, elevators, and so on. Doesn't have to be naquadah; Luci's probably not going to send anything but the low-level henchmen if he thinks an invasion is called for. Spray paint should do."

"Iron at the thresholds, too," Sam suggested. "There's too much foot traffic for a salt line to hold, but not even Azazel could cross iron."

"Dr. Jackson, can you find pictures of those symbols?" Landry asked.

Daniel squinted at the ceiling again. "Sure. I think I even know which book to check."

"Col. Mitchell, assign work details."

"Yes, sir," Mitchell nodded.

"Col. Caldwell," O'Neill continued, "I want the _Daedalus_ monitoring supernatural life signs in and around Cheyenne Mountain. Col. Ellis, you take DC; I'll get copies of those symbols from Daniel and assign work details at the Pentagon. Mitchell, when you're done here, start monitoring Davenport. Carter, Teal'c, keep working with the Winchesters. Vala, I still want you researching this nursing home; Lee, you help her. Dr. Beckett, you and your team keep working on that vaccine; even though the pressure's off, we may yet need it. See if the Prior plague vaccine can give you any ideas."

"Aye, General," Beckett nodded.

"Gabriel, give Daniel a copy of the exorcism you used at Niveus. We may need it if we catch something in one of these traps."

"Right," Gabriel nodded.

"What more do you need from us, General?" Woolsey asked.

"At the moment, just stand by. Check back with us Sunday morning for an update on the Davenport raid."

"Yes, sir. Please give Mr. Coolidge my regards."

"Will do. Dismissed."

The video feed ended; the Gate shut down; and people began drifting out of the briefing room, still in shock from what they'd just witnessed. Caldwell went out of his way to shake hands with both Sam and Dean, though he didn't say anything to either of them. So did Mitchell.

Gabriel scribbled something on Daniel's notepad and handed it back to him.

Daniel raised both eyebrows in surprise. "Enochian. Huh."

"Faster and easier than the Latin ones," Gabriel replied.

"And you broadcast this on the PA system, you said?"

"Right."

Daniel nodded. "I'll make sure enough people learn this that someone will be able to get to a microphone in case of a foothold situation."

"C'mon, guys," Carter interrupted. "It's been a long day, and you've got another one coming up on Saturday. Our people can take it from here. Let's get you home."

And Dean was suddenly, overwhelmingly reminded of Mary. It was all he could do to nod his acceptance, and he glanced at Sam just in time to catch him swallowing hard, clearly thinking the same thing. He was glad Gabriel had the presence of mind to answer for them and to steer them into the Impala once they were on board the _Hammond _once more.

"She's taller than Mom," Sam observed quietly when they'd beamed down to Bobby's yard.

"And younger," Dean agreed. "Or younger than she... y'know... would have been."

_I, too, see the resemblance_, Dishon said. _I think Col. Carter would be honored if you told her._

_Maybe. When it's over._

"C'mon, muttonheads," Gabriel said gently. "Let's get inside before Bobby comes out after us."

So they piled out of the car and made their way into the house, and while Gabriel went into the kitchen to fix himself something sugary, Bobby led Sam and Dean to Cas.

Cas was dozing on the window-seat bed, half-reclining on a mound of pillows and covered with a quilt that had once been Dean's favorite, when Bobby ushered the brothers into the study, but he stirred and woke as soon as Dean called his name. Bobby stopped him from sitting up. Instead, the Winchesters grabbed chairs and sat down beside the bed, taking in the four stitched-up gashes in his left eyebrow and the general pallor and exhaustion of his face. Bobby patted Dean on the shoulder and left.

"You doin' okay, Cas?" Sam asked with a worried frown.

"I am better than I was," Cas conceded. "But I am far from well."

Dean nodded. "Yeah. Gabriel told us. Man, I'm sorry."

"Dean. You said no to Michael. I owe you an apology."

"Cas. It's okay."

"You are not the burnt and broken shell of a man I believed you to be."

A beat passed before Dean managed to say, "Thank you. I appreciate that."

"You're welcome." Cas shifted and ran an appraising eye over both Winchesters. "You surprise me, though. It is long since the Goa'uld walked the earth freely. I wouldn't think you would be so quick to join with them voluntarily."

Dishon took over with an indignant eye flash. "We are not Goa'uld, Castiel."

"Dishon," Salim chided. "The Tok'ra did not come to Earth until Jolinar blended with Col. Carter. Castiel is assigned to Earth, and by then he was watching the Winchesters; he could not know. He is not like Kali, who probably has worshippers among the SGC personnel."

"Gabriel was supposed to explain."

"He did," Cas interrupted with a puzzled head tilt, and Dishon suddenly saw why Dean kept making comparisons to Teal'c. "I wasn't sure he understood. My garrison did battle with Sokar once and drove him away before he could find a way to begin breaking the seals on Lucifer's cage, though we couldn't stop him from taking an entire English village with him. I didn't think Gabriel had any knowledge of the Goa'uld."

"Sokar is dead," Dishon stated proudly. "The Tok'ra and the Tau'ri destroyed Ne'tu, and Sokar's ship was caught in the explosion."

Cas brightened at that. "And the village?"

"Sokar took them to another planet and allowed them to populate it," Salim replied. "Many he used as hosts. But SG-1 was able to kill Sokar's last messenger and convince the people to bury their Stargate. They are free."

Cas closed his eyes in relief and sank back into his pillows. Then he looked back at Dishon and Salim. "It seems that it is I who misunderstood the nature of the Tok'ra. My apologies to you both."

Dishon smiled gently. "We are pleased to be your allies, Castiel. Sam and Dean are very fond of you and grateful for all you have done for them."

Cas managed a small smile in return. "Thank you."

"Rest now, Castiel," said Salim. "We have a full day to rest and prepare for the mission to capture the Pestilence ring."

Cas nodded and let his eyes drift closed, and within seconds he was snoring quietly. Dishon returned control to Dean, who gingerly pulled the old quilt higher around Cas' shoulders.

"He looks so frail," Sam whispered sadly. "So..."

"Human," Dean finished. "Yeah. I know." He sighed. "Why do all our friends get hurt, Sammy?"

Sam recognized the rhetorical question for what it was and squeezed Dean's shoulder. "C'mon. We should get some rest ourselves."

"Yeah. Guess we should."

"Remember when we used to just hunt wendigos, how much simpler things were?" Sam asked as they left the room.

"Not really," Dean replied.

Sam sighed and tried again. "You ever wish we'd gone back to the Tok'ra planet and stayed there, or maybe gone through the quantum mirror with the Asgard?"

"No." Dean paused. "But I do wish we could go to Atlantis."

Sam blinked. "Really."

"Yeah. I mean, with the Tok'ra, it's all burning dands and seserts—"

"Sands and deserts," Sam and Dishon corrected at the same time, and Dishon added, _No, it isn't_.

Dean ignored them. "But Atlantis... I dunno, it just... it's pretty, y'know?"

Sam nodded, and Dean saw the same ache in his brother's eyes that he was feeling in his own bones. "Yeah. Yeah, I know. I wish we could, too."

They were silent for a moment before Dean added with false bravado, "'Course, I couldn't take my baby with us."

"And we'd have to put up with McKay."

"No maid service."

"No girls for you."

"No Internet for you, Geek Boy."

"Crazy natives."

"Weird food."

"Space vampires."

"At least you can _shoot_ those," Dean muttered.

They gave each other a sidelong look then, unable to keep up the game they'd always played when trying to talk themselves out of wanting something they couldn't have. Truth be told, even the Tok'ra homeworld, as dry and dull as it was and as much time as they'd have to spend running around the galaxy chasing down the Lucian Alliance while not giving away the fact that they were Tau'ri, would be preferable to the life they had now, facing the impossible task of single-handedly stopping the Apocalypse. Atlantis... well, they dared not even dream of it.

That didn't stop them from wishing, though.

* * *

.

* * *

A/N: The musical selections... well, the characters weren't necessarily the only ones who were stressed and sleep-deprived. "Lonely Little Petunia" is an old standard; the line Dean replies with, if you couldn't guess from the chapter title, is from "Take It Easy" by the Eagles.

Yes, the cookie-scented candle was a nod to Jared's RL preference. I thought it suited Gabriel's tastes as well.

"Burning dands and seserts" is a Monkees joke (Micky flubbed the line and corrected himself), but since several of Jensen's similar transpositions have made it into episodes as aired, I figure it's the kind of slip Dean would make as well.


	7. Hast Du Etwas Zeit Für Mich

A/N: The title is the first line of "99 Luftballons" by Nena (it literally means "If you have some time for me"). The tamarind curry chicken idea came from the Williams-Sonoma website. See if you can spot the "Vegas" reference!

* * *

Chapter 7  
Hast Du Etwas Zeit Für Mich

Midnight had come and gone, and Daniel was beginning to think that at 44, he was getting too old to get by on a few hours of sleep snatched here and there between long stretches of research and coffee. The diagrams of the traps Gabriel had mentioned were easy enough to find, and he and Teal'c hadn't had any trouble demonstrating how to draw them; the team leaders Mitchell had assigned to warding detail had all been at the briefing and were able to suspend their skepticism enough to admit that the Key of Solomon had worked. And they had seen the demon's smoke-form and agreed that every conceivable entrance needed to be rendered impassable to anything that couldn't touch iron. But then Jack had dragged him to Washington, where the Joint Chiefs were convinced Jack had lost his mind, and now Daniel was waiting in Jack's office while Jack continued to shout at the Joint Chiefs and dear, faithful Walter was going ahead with placing wards around Homeworld Command just in case.

Daniel was almost on the point of falling asleep on Jack's desk when:

"Danyer?"

Daniel jerked his head up and looked straight into the eyes of his long-ascended brother-in-law.

"_Skaara?_"

"Listen, Danyer. Death is going to Chick-ah-go."

"Chicago? When?"

"Tell Dean!" Skaara cried and vanished.

"Skaara?"

There was no reply.

It took Daniel a good fifteen seconds to recover enough to grab the phone and call Teal'c.

* * *

"So what did Todd want?" Dean asked Sam at breakfast.

"What? Oh. Nothing, really. He was just curious about what made me different from other humans. Guess he'd been starin' at my DNA all day and... wondered."

"Did he, like... ask you questions?"

Sam shrugged. "Not really. Kind of tried to probe a little, but it wasn't too hard to resist. And then he laughed and said something about 'Defiance tastes like life itself.' Then he backed off and just... watched me for a while."

"Who's Todd?" Bobby asked.

"Wraith," the brothers chorused.

"The space vampire kind," Dean clarified. "Not... what we went up against in Oklahoma. Some kind of telepath, too. It was weird."

"Oh, wait, no," Sam said. "He asked me about Pestilence, and then he wanted to know what a Horseman was."

Dean frowned. "What'd you tell him?"

Sam shook his head. "I don't remember."

* * *

"This is one of those times when I hate being cut off from Earth," McKay complained over his own breakfast.

"That thing with Coolidge?" Ronon asked knowingly.

"Yeah. That was just... freaky. I wanna know what really happened."

"Whatever it was, it couldn't have happened to a nicer guy," Sheppard deadpanned.

Ronon snorted in amusement.

"Were any of you able to see what Gabriel did to the ceiling?" Teyla wondered. "I believe Dr. Jackson called it a Key of Solomon."

"No, the camera was at the wrong angle," Sheppard replied.

"Seriously," McKay continued, "I think even _Todd_ was freaked out by that smoke monster thing."

"It was a demon, Rodney."

"Says who, Dean Winchester?"

"Todd called it that first. Don't tell me you didn't see the way he was looking at the Winchesters. He must have seen something in their minds."

"Oh, so we're trusting Todd to distinguish fact from delusion when we're the only Earth humans he knows."

"Are you callin' me delusional?"

"Well, if the shoe fits, Col. Kamikaze..."

Teyla and Ronon exchanged a look and left Sheppard and McKay to their half-serious squabble. But while Ronon went off to the gym, Teyla checked to make sure her son Torren was settled in for the day with his babysitter and then took a laptop to a quiet spot on the east pier and began searching the Earth encyclopedias in the city's database for information about devil's traps. Though the Gift gave her access to the Wraith's mindlink, she had learned to tune out Todd's thoughts when he was first held captive in Atlantis three years earlier, but she knew that both Sheppard and McKay had been right about one thing: despite his cool outward demeanor, Todd had seen something during that briefing that deeply disturbed him, and it wasn't only related to Coolidge. And if Earth faced an enemy that dangerous, Atlantis needed to prepare to defend against it should Earth fall.

* * *

For once, Todd was rather grateful that most of the Lanteans preferred not to eat at the same table as a Wraith, even one genetically modified like himself. Requesting, and receiving, breakfast in his guarded quarters gave him the privacy he needed to finish processing what he'd seen the night before, especially what he'd found in the minds of Sam and Dean Winchester.

It was odd how much and how little a human's DNA could tell about him. He had not been surprised by the Winchesters' appearance or by their strength of mind, the latter of which reminded him of Sheppard, Col. Carter, and other Earth humans like them. He had known in advance about their symbiotes, whose minds were easy to detect and ignore, and it was simple enough to discern in the humans the strain of those they called Ancients. In that, too, the Winchesters were like Sheppard. Yet there was something else in them that Todd could not place, something akin to the bright not-human called Gabriel who sat beside them at the briefing. Perhaps it was related to that unknown allele on the seventh chromosome. And though he had known that they were spawned by the same queen and consort, the bond of their brotherhood would have been striking even among Wraith hatched from the same brood, so visible was it even in the way they moved and spoke, never mind the silent conversation they had had even without mind-speech.

Their minds, however... nothing could have prepared him for that, not in ten thousand years.

The elder, Dean, had regarded him with wary curiosity for a moment but had not guarded his mind until he recalled the name _Alastair_ and a human face structured like Todd's with eyes that revealed a spirit darker even than Kolya's had been. A gentle prod gained only the elaboration _demon_, but Dean had not been able to prevent Todd from receiving a flash of memory—fire, torture, screams, agony beyond even the most terrible throes of starvation Todd had experienced in his Genii prison. That had been cut off with the word _Hell_ and a phrase Todd didn't understand in a tone that meant _Get out_, and Dean had deliberately looked away.

Todd had complied with the thought that he was really more interested in Sam, which caused Dean to tense slightly until he concluded that Todd meant no harm to his brother. He had not met Todd's eyes again until after the incident with Coolidge.

Sam had been easier to connect with, surprisingly, yet he was more on his guard, and it hadn't taken Todd long to figure out why—another mind, darker still than Dean's memory of Alastair, was searching for entrance from afar. Sam was strong, though, easily as strong as Sheppard, and wise in dividing his energy among perceived threats. Todd had sent him his approval and backed off until the discussion turned to the creature called Pestilence. Sam had explained the concept of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and he had probably intended to leave it at that; but he, like Dean, was unable to fully block his memories from Todd's view, and Todd caught flashes of the brothers' showdown with Famine.

He almost wished he hadn't.

The early part was all too familiar—the burning anguish of starvation, of bloodthirst—and all too wrong to be coming from a human, and Sam had apparently known it because the craving was overlaid with loathing. The next flash was of his being freed by Famine's demons from a bondage he'd requested, followed by his total loss of control until he'd slaked his thirst. But the rush Sam recalled was not simply that of drinking in the life of another creature; there was power in it, dark power, beyond even the experience of the Wraith. And what came after was even more startling: the struggle to overcome the craving in the face of Famine himself, the surge of power that forced Famine's demons from their hosts, the tang of Sam's own blood dripping from his nose as he repaid Famine agony for agony... and then the crash and the anguish of the protein breaking down in his system until what remained was the small amount his body normally produced.

Then Coolidge had appeared, and Todd held another piece of the puzzle from simple observation; the demon's mind was every bit as dark as the Winchesters' memories had led him to suspect, more boundlessly cruel even than the most hated of Wraith queens. And yet it had fled at one look from Gabriel, as if it could not bear his brightness. Todd would show no weakness in the humans' council, but the experience had shaken him to the core.

He finally understood what the Earthlings meant by _evil_.

For all the talk Todd had overheard on Earth about whether or not the Lanteans considered him a pet, the reverse was far more true; he had grown fond of these ridiculous humans—_his_ humans, his in a way no Wraith worshipper could ever be, despite their checkered history—and he had found himself beginning to value some of the same things they valued. Now he was beginning to despise at least one of the things they despised.

Beckett had been right about the demon blood protein being too dangerous to use as a defense against the Croatoan virus. If a demon's blood could make such changes in Sam Winchester, who apparently knew how to use its power, what would it do to another who did not? Even among Wraith worshippers, the gift of life—

The thought brought Todd up short. The Carson Beckett who had died in 2007 had discovered the enzyme responsible for the gift of life, and that accursed half-Wraith they called Michael had used it as the basis for a serum that kept Beckett's clone, the one currently in Atlantis, from experiencing catastrophic organ failure. Might there perhaps be an answer there? It might only act as an inhibitor on its own, but combined with the Prior plague vaccine...

When Beckett came to get Todd an hour later, he took one look at the Wraith cursing at his computer and told the guard to bring Todd to the lab when he figured out whatever it was he was working on.

* * *

"That's all he said?"

"Yep. 'Death is going to Chicago. Tell Dean.'"

Dean grumbled something uncomplimentary in Goa'uld about the Ancients and their stupid rules.

Daniel chuckled, though Dean wasn't sure how much he'd been able to hear over the phone. "We had the _Odyssey_ check for anomalous life signs in the Chicago area, but nothing's turned up yet aside from low-level demons. We're keeping an eye on it, though."

Dean sighed and glanced at Sam, who was once more deep in kel'no'reem beside the fireplace after having spent some time in mysterious conferences with Bobby and Gabriel earlier in the morning. "Okay. Thanks. Anything more on Pestilence?"

"We're still not quite sure what we're looking for, but there's not much activity in Davenport other than two or three demons hanging out in that nursing home. Vala's still checking its records, but so far the only thing we've seen that's unusual is the number of deaths due to bizarre infections. They seem to have stopped when the swine flu outbreaks in Nevada began."

"Infections? Like that... drug-resistant staph?"

"No, weirder than that, like this one Alzheimer's patient who died from a combination of hepatitis, tuberculosis, and ebola that appeared over a period of three days. She'd never been out of the country, and none of the other patients had or were at risk for any of those diseases."

"Okay, yeah, that sounds supernatural. Like Gabriel said, any bacterium will do."

"Or any virus, apparently."

"Mm. How's Coolidge?"

Daniel snorted. "Demanding to know what kind of alien we'd brought back this time."

Both Dean and Dishon groaned.

"He doesn't remember any of what happened, just getting jumped by a patch of smog in DC and waking up in the SGC infirmary. So Jack blamed it on the Lucian Alliance."

"Heh. That'll keep the IOA busy for a while."

"No kidding. Listen, Jack wants a short briefing tomorrow at 1800 before you guys head to Davenport. Even if Vala can't find anything else, we can get you the sensor readings from the _Odyssey_, and Sam—er, Col. Carter thinks you should take a life-signs detector in with you. She's modifying it now; normally they don't distinguish between human and non-human, but she thinks she can get it calibrated by tomorrow."

"Well, the life-signs detector sounds awesome, but do we have to have the briefing? I'd rather drive this time."

Daniel chuckled again. "I'll see what I can do."

"Thanks, Daniel."

"Hey, no problem. I'll call back when we know more."

"Right. Bye."

They hung up, and Dean went into the study and walked over to a whiteboard (Teal'c's idea) with a list in Bobby's handwriting that read:

_Pestilence – Davenport, IA, Saturday_

_Death – ?_

_Lucifer – ?_

He erased the question mark next to "Death" and wrote "Chicago." Then, after a moment's hesitation, he erased the one beside "Lucifer" and wrote "Detroit."

"Dean?"

Dean turned. "Hey, Cas. How are you?"

"Thirsty." Cas tried to sit up and winced but succeeded in pushing himself further up the mound of pillows.

Dean nodded. "Hold on. I'll get you something."

"Orange juice," Gabriel suggested from his spot at the stove. Somehow he'd convinced Bobby that it was his turn to fix lunch, and he was in the middle of cooking some chicken thing that smelled amazing.

"Do we have any?" Dean asked as he walked into the kitchen.

Gabriel nodded at the fridge, and Dean opened it to find a fresh gallon jug of an extra-sweet brand Sam had found in Texas once. Not wanting to ask how it got there, Dean poured a glass of it for Cas and carried it back into the study.

"Thank you," Cas nodded and gingerly took a sip. His eyes widened in surprise. "This tastes more pleasant than the last time I tried orange juice."

Dean frowned. "When was that?"

"When I was still in 1978."

Dean didn't even want to think about what kind of orange juice that ratty hotel in Lawrence had served.

"So, Chicago?" Gabriel called.

"Chicago," Dean confirmed. "Skaara didn't say _when_, but it's more than we had to go on before."

Gabriel chuckled. "I was wondering when we'd hear from Abydos. All the other departed friends of SG-1 wanted in on the action."

"Any way you can find out more?"

"Let's get Pestilence first. If Death has plans for a city like Chicago, the Reapers will start showing up in force a day or two beforehand. That's bound to show up on the _Odyssey_'s sensors."

Cas frowned slightly at that, but Dean decided not to press. One thing he knew about Gabriel was that he parted with information only when he felt like it, but never too late for it to be used. The universe couldn't possibly hate them enough for stopping Pestilence to cause them to miss stopping Death... could it?

_Well, theoretically, it could, if one believed in fate to that degree_, Dishon replied. _I have seen worse timing over the centuries. But I think you are right to trust Gabriel._

Dean quirked a small wry smile. _Thanks, dude._

"Okay, kids, dinner is served," Gabriel stated, leaving the stove to rummage in the cabinets for dishes.

Dean helped Cas to his feet, but the angel was able to walk without support, so Dean left him to retrieve Bobby from the shop. Only on the way back to the kitchen did he stop to rouse Sam, who sighed and followed him as if he were interrupting something important.

"Tamarind curry chicken," Gabriel was explaining to Bobby. "Should keep our heads clear!"

Sam blinked. "Wow. I haven't had curry since... summer of '04, I think? Jess was on an Indian food kick."

The fact that he was able to say Jess' name without crying or exploding, Dean thought as he sat down, was a very good sign considering what they'd just been through. Maybe all this meditation was doing him some good.

Then again, the meal was eaten largely in silence apart from compliments to Gabriel on the food. Cas and Bobby seemed to be truly intent on their chicken, but Sam was eating like he had other things to do, and Gabriel kept trying unsuccessfully not to shoot him an expectant glance every thirty seconds. Finally, both the spice and the tension got to be too much, and Dean threw down his fork, startling everyone else.

"Somethin' you wanna share with the class, Sammy?"

Sam made faces for a moment like he was arguing with Salim about something, then sighed when Bobby gave him a guilty grimace and said, "Go ahead, son. We're all here; not gonna get a much better chance than this."

Taking a deep breath, Sam said, "I've been thinking. _We've_ been thinking. Say we can open the cage. Great. What do we do next, lead the devil to the edge and get him to jump in?"

Dean frowned. "You got a better idea?"

"What if you guys lead the devil to the edge... and _I_ jump in?"

"_What?_ What the hell is wrong with you?"

"Dean."

"Don't 'Dean' me!"

"It's not the worst idea I've ever heard," Cas interrupted.

Everyone but Gabriel stared at him.

"The two of you have a habit of exceeding my expectations. Dean resisted Michael; Sam could resist Lucifer. But there are things that you would need to know."

"We've been over 'em," Gabriel said. "Michael, the demon blood, all of it. Salim even brought up some contingencies you might not have thought of."

Dean shook his head. "Oh, no. No way. You can't do this, Sammy. Dishon?"

Dishon took over and grimaced. "This sounds like a... what is it called... a 'Hail Mary'?"

Sam snorted, and he and Gabriel smiled wryly at each other as he recited, "Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death."

"Rather like the Dakara weapon, I think it should be our last option. It _might_ work—hush, Dean—but it is an extremely long shot, and there may yet be another option that would work better and would not cost Sam his life should he succeed."

Leave it to the alien to cut directly to the crux of the matter. Dean couldn't be sure which was the more terrifying thought, the memory of Lucifer wearing Sam's face in 2014 or the prospect of Sam spending eternity in Lucifer's cage and Dean spending it alone in a Heaven he didn't like. He'd already sold his soul to save Sam's life once. What would it take to save him again?

Sam fiddled with a bite of eggplant that was left on his plate. "I'm not gonna do it unless we all agree. But it... might not cost me my life."

Dean took back control. "Wait, I thought you said you were gonna jump in the hole."

"I did."

"How is that _not_ gonna cost you your life?"

Sam met his eyes then. "I've been talking it over with Salim. We've got a plan."


	8. Takin' Care of Business

Chapter 8  
Takin' Care of Business

Cas dozed off again after lunch, and though it would take them at most nine hours to drive the 450 miles to Davenport (if the traffic was exceptionally bad or they were ambushed), Dean didn't want to hang around any longer, partly because of the tension over Sam and Salim's totally insane plan and partly because neither he nor Sam wanted to be the one to put his foot down and tell Cas that they weren't going to risk his being unable to fight off whatever germs Pestilence might throw at him. The symbiotes were all the backup they needed for this job, and though Cas was recovering faster than they'd anticipated, they couldn't expect him to be completely back in fighting form by the next day if he was truly mostly human. So they bade Gabriel and Bobby farewell and left before Cas could wake up.

As the Impala pulled away from Bobby's house, Dean cranked up the radio and forced both himself and Dishon to put Detroit on the far back burner, letting the miles between Sioux Falls and Davenport ease away the anxiety he felt. Gabriel was right. Getting Pestilence had to be their top priority for the moment. They could worry about Detroit after Chicago, and they'd worry about Chicago after Davenport.

They were just outside of Cedar Falls when Daniel finally called back. "Jack said we can do the briefing by speakerphone as long as you'll let Col. Carter bring you the life-signs detector and explain how to use it," he reported

"Fair enough," Dean agreed. "We'll call you when we're at the motel."

Daniel's blink was almost audible. "You're already on the road?"

"Yeah, Bobby's house gets a little crowded with five people in it."

Sam shot him a grateful look at that.

Daniel didn't have any other news, except that Vala had given up on the nursing home's records and was pestering Mitchell about the possibility of hunting for any artifacts Crowley might have stashed at the house in Nevada. "We should send Castiel and Bobby with her if she goes," Dishon suggested.

Sam snickered, but Daniel thought it was worth considering.

"I wonder why they never gave us a life-signs detector before," Dean mused as he hung up.

Sam shrugged, but it was Salim who answered, "It is Ancient technology from Atlantis. The Tok'ra have never used them."

"Hey, Dishon," Sam said after taking back control, "I know Vala likes Bobby, but do you really think we should send Cas? She's more Dean's type."

Dishon chuckled. "All the more reason to send Castiel. He won't let her distract him from the mission."

Sam laughed again. "Good point."

"She will need protection. Crowley may have booby-trapped his hoard, and there may be other demons searching for it. And at the rate he is recovering, Castiel will need something to do tomorrow. If he believes himself incapable of aiding us..."

"You think he'll try to drink another liquor store?"

_Dishon..._ Dean warned.

Dishon kept his eyes on the road, but his voice was grim. "You did not see him as Dean did in that alternate timeline, unable to cope with the loss of his power and the fact that his God and his brothers had abandoned him. Had he been fully mortal, the means he used to combat his despair would have killed him. That depression has already begun. We must not leave him to drown in it."

Dean relaxed as Dishon relinquished control. He hadn't told Sam much of what he'd seen in 2014, and the image of a stoned and apathetic Cas was one he definitely didn't want to reveal to anyone. Dishon's version explained their shared concern without giving away too many details.

Sam sighed and pulled out his cell phone. "Okay. You're right, there's really not much else he could do to help out tomorrow. And we don't need him coming after us, either. I hate feeling superior to an angel, but..."

"Cas ain't at the top of his game," Dean agreed. "But he's not gonna take it easy unless we make him."

Sam nodded and called Bobby.

* * *

Having reclaimed his usual clothes, Castiel was perched in a tree behind Bobby's house, staring morosely into the woods and not really looking at anything, and was halfway through a bottle of Jack Daniels when he felt the bottle disappear from his hands at the same time as the palm of a hand connected with the back of his head, jarring him back to alertness.

"And here I thought Dean had been a _good_ influence on you," Gabriel grumbled, appearing next to him on the stout branch where he was seated.

Castiel sighed and slumped against the trunk of the tree. "Please go away, Gabriel."

"Nope. Not happening. Spill." The last command was accompanied by a gentle poke at his vessel's ribcage.

Castiel shook his head. "It is the eleventh hour, and I am useless."

"No, you're not."

"They _left_ me, Gabriel."

"They left me, too, bro. And Bobby. And the squad of Marines Jack O'Neill was prepared to send with them."

"I ought to be able to help them."

Gabriel's hand landed on the back of Castiel's head again, but gently. And Castiel had a sudden vision of Sam and Dean in agony on the floor of the nursing home, slowly dying as Pestilence multiplied diseases in their bodies—and of himself, bursting through the door only to be struck down in the same way, barely managing to summon the strength to cut the ring from Pestilence's hand and kill the young demon who attacked him.

Gabriel pulled his hand away and ended the vision. "That's one way this could have gone without the Tok'ra," he explained as Castiel looked at him. "The most likely way, actually. You're already stronger than that in this reality, but you'd never be able to keep your vessel free from infection. And they don't want you to suffer any more than you already have."

"I'm an angel," Castiel countered, sounding more petulant than he meant to. "I'm not supposed to suffer at all."

"If you want to get technical, you're not supposed to _be_ here, and neither are they, and neither am I. Right now there are a lot of 'not supposed to's that are. So are you gonna sit here and curse the darkness, or are you gonna go on this mission Sam just called Bobby about?"

Castiel blinked. "What mission?"

"Vala Mal Doran wants to hunt down Crowley's stash of ill-gotten goodies. Dishon thinks she needs some help. And tomorrow I'm going to be checking up on this lead we got from Skaara."

Castiel tried to consider this announcement and found that he was already more buzzed than he realized.

Gabriel huffed. "How did you get up here, anyway?"

"I flew... I think." Why was he already drunk?

Gabriel grabbed him by the back of the neck and flew both of them back to the bed that was now Castiel's. "Get some sleep, little brother," he ordered, changing Castiel's clothes back to the flannel pajamas he'd worn earlier and pushing him over onto the pillows. "You're gonna need it if you want to keep up with Vala."

"You think I should go?"

"I _know_ you should go, and so does Dean. You won't do yourself any good hanging around here."

Castiel sighed and nodded and let Gabriel push him into a dreamless healing sleep.

* * *

Gabriel felt out the SGC's wards as he arrived with Bobby and a mildly hungover Castiel the next morning. "There's a vent on Level Twenty that someone missed," he informed Landry briefly before heading off to Carter's lab, chuckling at the startled face Landry had made.

"Hey, Gabriel!" Carter smiled brightly as he walked in, and O'Neill looked up from a device that looked like a Gameboy and nodded at him. "You're just in time to help me test the modifications I've made. It's a monochromatic screen, so I can't make it distinguish between angels and demons, but I _think_ I've at least gotten it to register supernatural life signs as a different shape."

"Yep," O'Neill agreed, studying the screen. "Two circles for us, and a square for Gabriel. And another square in... the mess hall."

"_I'm_ not a square!" Gabriel replied, pretending to be offended. "I'm very hip, thank you. It suits Castiel, though."

As intended, both humans laughed.

"Sam, the reason I came down here was to borrow a firewalled computer. To follow up on Skaara's hint, I need to send some emails with an encryption layer I don't want to risk on just any network."

Carter glanced at O'Neill, who shrugged, and nodded at Gabriel. "Sure. Come with me."

Not only did she come up with a firewalled laptop, she escorted him to VIP quarters and posted a guard with orders that Gabriel not be disturbed. Gabriel waited until she'd left before sending a bowl of blue Jell-O to her desk.

Emailing Ash was a tricky proposition. Not as tricky as trying to get in and out of Heaven again, of course—he wasn't stupid enough to think Michael and Raphael hadn't noticed the number of souls that had gone on that little jaunt on Thursday, and he didn't want to risk them catching him if he went back now—but not exactly the sort of thing even an archangel did every day, and certainly not the sort of thing he wanted advertised. But even though he couldn't hear much about Death's dealings amid the angelic chatter he was still privy to, a major catastrophe was bound to be a hot topic of conversation Upstairs, and Ash did have a scanner. So email it was.

And he didn't have to wait long for the reply:

_noon monday - major storm, 3 mil dead, other natrl disasters tba_

He let out a low whistle. Three million fatalities in one blow. Gabriel could just hear Dean cursing when he found out, and he wouldn't blame the guy. They hadn't killed that many people in _the Flood_, for crying out loud, and Dad had promised Noah that He'd never do that again.

_Any idea where in Chi-town we should look?_ he wrote back.

_sry, amigo, they dont tell me everything but rumor has it he wants 2 talk 2 dean - abdiel said something abt pizza?_

Dean and Death facing off over Chicago-style pizza. Gabriel had to laugh—and then sent Ash a pizza of his own.

_i aint sharing this w/abdiel_

And that made Gabriel laugh even harder.

* * *

After handing off the life-signs detector and giving a brief explanation of the device to Dean while Sam studied the screen intently, Carter relayed Gabriel's minimal information about Chicago despite being distracted by the run-down motel room where the Winchesters were staying. She got the sense that this was the sort of place where they spent most of their time, had done since they were tiny, and she couldn't bear to think what kind of childhood they'd had. Her dad might have been a workaholic, but at least they'd had a house of their own.

"Monday," Dean repeated, gently banging the back of his head against the headboard of the bed where he was lounging. "Okay. Since we're this close, we should probably head that way tomorrow."

"Gen. O'Neill wants you at the SGC for the Atlantis check-in tomorrow morning," Carter noted. "And I think he'll insist that we get you a nicer hotel room than this."

The brothers exchanged a slightly embarrassed glance at that, and she could almost hear the Tok'ra expressing their displeasure with their surroundings. Not that Tok'ra tunnels were as luxurious as most Goa'uld preferred, but Spartan was still better than squalid.

Sam rubbed the back of his neck with his free hand. "Can we still choose our own aliases?"

Carter shrugged. "Don't see why not."

Dean sighed. "Okay. We'll call when we're done."

"Okay. Good luck." Carter activated her radio. "Carter to _Hammond_—all clear."

The last thing she heard before beaming out was Dean saying, "Hey, Sammy, lemme see that thing."

* * *

If flying was currently out of the question, Castiel decided, the Asgard transporter technology employed by the SGC's ships might be the next best thing. It wasn't completely comfortable, but at least it was almost instantaneous and not nearly as confining as traveling by automobile, and it didn't require any energy output from him. That, Col. Caldwell's obvious amusement at Castiel's pronouncement that he really did look like Samuel Campbell, and the momentary glimpse of Earth he had gotten from the bridge of the _Daedalus_ had cheered him up no end.

It still hurt to have lost so much of his grace, but maybe being mostly mortal wouldn't be as hard as he'd feared.

Teal'c, who reminded Castiel of happier days when Uriel was still the funniest angel in the garrison rather than a cranky, human-hating traitor, was currently escorting Castiel, Bobby, and Vala through the house where Crowley had lived. Gabriel had apparently broken the Enochian wards when he first arrived, so Castiel had no trouble entering the house, but the demonic taint still lingered, and he found himself herding Bobby and Vala around the hellhound blood in the front hall before he realized that the stains should be dry by then. Vala murmured something about him being "such a gentleman" and smiled in a way Castiel supposed was an attempt at seduction, but a few uncomprehending blinks on his part convinced her not to continue.

He didn't quite know what to think of Vala. In some ways she reminded him of Dean, brash and amoral, fun-loving and flighty, but deeply wounded by both an absent father and her possession by Qetesh. Perhaps it was the fact that she wasn't from Earth that confused him... or maybe it was the fact that she cheerfully admitted to taking hostages simply to have something to do. Dean's means of relieving boredom didn't always meet with Castiel's approval, but at least they weren't _that_ extreme.

Regardless, he was glad to have her with them, since he'd never had to search for a crossroads demon's cache of dealt goods before and she claimed to be an expert in locating hidden treasures. She made quick work of examining the house, declared that she'd been in more appealing ruins on completely dead worlds, and headed for the backyard, wondering idly on the way down the stairs from the second floor whether they'd be able to find and destroy Crowley's contracts while they were at it. "Not that it matters so much if time really is about to end, but I suppose it can't hurt to try..."

"It isn't that simple," Castiel replied. "There is no physical contract to destroy, and Crowley's authority as executor has assuredly passed to one of his lieutenants."

"But if it's not on paper, or a tablet or crystal or whatever, how do you sign it?"

"The agreement is sealed with a kiss."

He didn't have to read Bobby's mind to understand the fleeting look of revulsion that crossed the older hunter's face; he'd been trying to wake up when Gabriel and Bobby had discussed Crowley's jaunt to Sioux Falls. Teal'c's raised eyebrow showed that he was thinking the same thing.

"Bet he took pictures, too," Bobby grumbled.

Castiel couldn't help feeling amused at that. "For unusual cases, undoubtedly so."

"Indeed," said Teal'c.

Vala shot each of them a confused look, but when no elaboration was forthcoming, she shrugged and started toward the back door. But as soon as she touched the knob, Castiel sensed that something was wrong.

"Wait," he commanded, and Vala jumped back, wide-eyed, as if she'd been burned.

"Somethin' out there, Cas?" Bobby frowned.

"I'm not sure." Castiel strode forward and put a hand on the door, stretching his senses as far as he was able. "Nothing living or undead that would harm us," he reported, "but there is... something. Wait here."

Vala objected, but Castiel didn't even listen to what she said. Indeed, so intent was he on getting outside to investigate that he almost forgot that he needed to open the door before he walked through it. Bobby coughed politely just in time to save him from an embarrassing collision.

Castiel had half expected Crowley's hellhound to be guarding his master's cache, to be honest, and it was a relief to be wrong about that. But he still sensed something... off. Not just wards, but something actively dangerous. He couldn't _see_ whatever it was, though, so it took a good five minutes of closing his eyes and following his other remaining extra-human senses to be able to pinpoint the source. Once he did locate it, he stooped and touched the ground to place a ring of fire around the perimeter of the area where Crowley had laid an elaborate trap. Then he went back to the house.

Vala looked unsettled. "Well! Good job we let you go first. I shouldn't have liked getting caught in that fire."

"The fire was my doing," Castiel explained. "I had no other way to mark the location of the trap."

"Do you know how to bypass it?" Bobby asked.

Castiel shook his head. "I can't even see it. I am simply aware of its presence."

"That's still something," Vala shrugged. "If there's a trap, it must be guarding something valuable, right?"

"That is a logical conclusion," Teal'c replied. "It is a single trap that does not encompass a large enough area to be effective against anyone trying to enter the house. Crowley appeared to believe that the wards he had placed upon the house were sufficient to keep his enemies at bay."

"They would have been," Castiel agreed with a slight smile, "if Gabriel had not broken the wards against angels."

Teal'c answered with a slight smile of his own. "Indeed."

Bobby muttered something about Vulcans, and Teal'c's smile grew as he chuckled. It hardly seemed fair that the Jaffa understood more pop culture references than Castiel did, but then, Teal'c _had_ lived among the humans of Earth for eleven years or so longer than Castiel had. He made a mental note to ask Teal'c what a DeLorean was, since Dean never had explained that one to him.

Vala clapped her hands once. "So! Goodies hidden under invisible trap that's probably lethal to humans and angels both. What do we do now?"

Castiel, Teal'c, and Bobby exchanged a look, but before any of them could voice the thought, they were interrupted by:

"Therrre's no need to fear, _Unnnn_derdog is here!"

"Hello, Gabriel," Castiel and Bobby chorused flatly.

Vala looked confused. "I didn't know angels went to the movies."

Gabriel scoffed. "Don't insult me. The cartoon was _way_ better."

"There's a cartoon?"

Gabriel started to laugh incredulously, then caught himself and shook his head. "I forget you're not from Earth, sorry. Yeah, it was a great cartoon, about forty years ago. You should check it out sometime—after all this is over, I mean." He turned and clapped Castiel on the shoulder. "So, little brother, I take it you found something?"

"Yes." Castiel pointed to the fire-ringed trap.

"Hum. Haven't seen that sort of thing for a few millennia. But I think... yeah." He snapped his fingers, and a fireball erupted from within the circle. Another snap, and a small cloudburst put out both fires. Gabriel sighed contentedly.

Vala muttered something about Marines and explosions, which made Gabriel and Teal'c chuckle.

"We good to go now?" Bobby asked.

"Let's see." Gabriel led the way back to the trapped site, which was still smoldering, and fanned away the smoke with his wings while he checked for further traps. Castiel sensed one a second before Gabriel snapped his fingers again and broke it. A third layer of sigils surfaced, some of them visible even to Castiel, and Gabriel paused, considering.

"What's wrong?" asked Vala.

"If this layer's broken, it summons a hellhound." Gabriel drummed his fingers against his chin thoughtfully before turning to Castiel. "Think you can shield them long enough for me to take care of the hound?"

Much as he wanted to say yes, Castiel didn't think he could handle shielding three people at the moment. "Perhaps we should fall back to the house," he suggested. "I can renew the wards while Bobby and Teal'c set salt lines."

Gabriel nodded and waved his hand in dismissal, and suddenly the rest of the group was in the kitchen. Bobby found the box of salt in the pantry and headed for the back door while Castiel pressed his right hand against the kitchen wall, searching out and repairing the wards placed by Crowley and adding a few of his own using Enochian incantations.

Vala shivered prettily as he backed away from the wall. "I felt that. Can you teach me how it's done?"

Castiel frowned. "Such knowledge was not intended for humans."

She pouted. "Gabriel gave Daniel an exorcism."

"That's different. The placing of wards requires power beyond human capabilities." In fact, even the few wards he'd just placed had taken more of a toll on his weakened grace than he'd expected. But he wasn't about to tell _Vala_, of all people, that he was tired; she seemed to be building up to an inappropriate suggestion as it was.

Bobby cleared his throat loudly, and Castiel turned to him with relief he hoped was not too obvious. "We're set. Teal'c's just finished salting the front of the house."

Castiel nodded and went to a window that overlooked the yard. Gabriel was watching the house, so Castiel was able to catch his eye right away and nod. Gabriel nodded back and returned his attention to the trapped area. Even at a distance, Castiel was able to feel the trap break.

Then the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end when the hellhound bayed in the distance, and he wondered idly if all humans reacted so strongly to the voice of the hounds or if the sensations he felt would be shared only by someone like Dean who had also done battle with and been injured (or in Dean's case, killed) by them. Part of his question was answered when Vala pressed herself against his side; she may have been playing up to him in some ways in a further attempt at seduction, but the fear he sensed in her mind was genuine.

So, swallowing hard, he tentatively put an arm around her shoulders. "We are safe here. The hound will attack Gabriel first in any case, and he will kill it before it can attempt to enter the house."

"I had wondered if we ought to catch it instead," Vala confessed hoarsely. "Might be worth a fortune on another world, you know? But, ah... that doesn't sound like an animal I care to meet."

Castiel murmured an Enochian spell that would allow them both to see the hound as it crossed the property line, and Vala gasped and shuddered. There was no pretense now as she clung to him, and his arm tightened protectively around her shoulders. "We are safe," he repeated. "Fear not."

He could almost hear Bobby roll his eyes behind them, but at the moment, he didn't care. Vala genuinely needed him.

"Watch now," he instructed her, and they watched as Gabriel's sword appeared in his hand and effortlessly severed the hound's head. They waited for a few more tense moments before it was clear that no other hounds were coming. Gabriel then set the remains ablaze, cleaned his sword, and gave Castiel a thumbs-up.

"All clear," Castiel reported. "Let's go see what Crowley was hiding."

Vala took a deep breath and released Castiel as she cleared her throat and tugged at the hem of her tunic to straighten it, suddenly embarrassed. "Sorry, boys... stupid of me, cowering like a little girl."

Confused, Castiel frowned. "Hellhounds are dangerous. Had we not been with you, you would have died."

"Yes, well..." She took another deep breath and _flounced_ out the door, calling to Gabriel with her accustomed brazen cheerfulness.

"Women," Bobby muttered and followed.

"Vala Mal Doran is unused to displaying such weakness in the company of other warriors," Teal'c explained with an amused smile.

Oh. "Dean is like that," Castiel nodded.

Teal'c's smile grew, and he followed Castiel into the yard, where Bobby had apparently insisted on doing the digging, probably with liberal use of the term "idjit," if past experience and Gabriel's laughter were accurate guides.

"I'll let you guys get on with it," Gabriel was saying.

"Bring us some curse boxes, would you?" Bobby asked.

"Sure. Have fun, Castiel," Gabriel added with a wink and left.

It took Bobby only a few minutes to uncover the large metal box that held Crowley's cache. Castiel took another minute to study the lid and determine the word of command needed to unlock it. But they were all stunned when Bobby opened the lid and revealed that the item on top was a rusty hand scythe that only Castiel recognized.

"How did he get this?" Castiel wondered, carefully removing it from the box.

"Why would he want it?" Vala asked, wrinkling her nose.

"This scythe belongs to the Horseman Death. It is rumored to kill anything. But the last time I saw it, Alastair was using it to kill Reapers. He still had it when we captured him."

"Uriel must have given it back to him when he escaped," Gabriel replied, having just returned with his arms full of curse boxes. "Alastair probably gave it to Crowley for safe keeping before he came back to the warehouse."

Castiel studied the scythe for a moment longer, rubbing absently at a patch of something that probably wasn't rust. Then he sighed. "I should give this to Dean."

* * *

In the end, Sam thought afterward, the actual hunt for the Horsemen's rings was far easier than perhaps it should have been. The briefing Saturday night lasted all of five minutes, after which Carter remotely uploaded the nursing home's layout to the life-signs detector and informed them where an abnormally strong life sign was. They grabbed shotguns, hand devices, and cloaking devices and went in as invisibly as possible, deliberately passed a minor demon possessing a nurse and followed her to Pestilence, and dispatched both demon and Horseman inside of a minute before Pestilence could unleash a deadly wave of disease through the building. Carter spent Saturday night configuring the _Hammond_'s sensors to be able to track Death on the basis of the readings she'd gotten from Pestilence.

Sunday morning the Winchesters collected their team and Death's scythe from the SGC and found out from Atlantis that Teyla had insisted on warding the Gateroom; she'd had McKay and Zelenka paint a Key of Solomon under the Gate while she, Ronon, and Sheppard installed iron plates in the thresholds of the doors and under the stairs to the control room. The angels approved, and Bobby promised to send more information in the next data burst. Beckett also reported that the Croatoan vaccine might be ready to manufacture inside of a week if he and Todd could iron out a few last kinks in the serum they were cobbling together from various alien sources. And Sunday night found Team Free Will settled in a suite at a three-star Chicago hotel and arguing over the best course of action regarding Death.

By the time the _Hammond_ traced Death's location Monday morning, Dean had convinced everyone else to let him go in alone. So Sam, Bobby, Gabriel, and Cas waited in the car, Sam staring nervously at the life-signs detector and Bobby staring nervously at the sky, while Dean walked into the Rinascita Pizzeria with Death's scythe and came out ten minutes later with Death's ring and a vow never to eat Chicago-style pizza again. The storm that blew through during that time was no worse than a summer squall in South Texas. And they made their report to the SGC and went back to Sioux Falls.

But Dean refused to tell Sam what Death had said. He talked with Bobby for a while on Tuesday, and Sam caught him playing with the rings every so often, but beyond admitting that he knew how to open the cage, he wouldn't talk about Chicago at all.

_Let be_, Salim advised the one time Sam considered pestering Dean to spill the beans. _You know he will tell you in his own time_.

Annoyingly, Salim was usually right. Sam left Dean alone.

A few days later, Sam was surprised to walk into the living room and find Dean on the floor by the fireplace, deep in kel'no'reem, while Cas sat in the easy chair watching over him with an air of curious concern. Sam nodded to Cas and passed into the kitchen as quietly as possible, retrieved a beer, and went out the back door to sit on the hood of the Impala for a while, just to get some fresh air and _not_ think about Detroit for a while.

Maybe an hour later, he heard Dean come up from behind the car, open a beer of his own, and lean against the front passenger door with a barely audible sigh. Sam glanced around in acknowledgment, but Dean didn't look at him, so Sam sat forward in concern.

"Dean?"

Dean still didn't meet his eyes, but he said the two words Sam had half hoped, half dreaded, but never truly expected to hear:

"I'm in."

* * *

.

* * *

A/N: I haven't been able to find a good estimate of the number of people killed in the Flood, but considering that neither canon adheres to a young-earth creationist view to begin with, I have no reason to assume that Gabriel's reaction to Ash's first email is inaccurate for this AU.

One chapter to go in this installment. Thanks to everyone who's reviewed, favorited, etc.!


	9. Epilogue

Epilogue

"Demon-possessed?" Lucy Mitchell Williams echoed incredulously.

"Yes, ma'am," Cam Mitchell replied, glad that they were out of earshot of the rest of the people at Brady's wake. "That's what Sam said. There was... there was some really bad stuff in his office, Aunt Lucy. Blood magic. Looked like he'd killed a man just before he disappeared, and it probably wasn't the first time."

"What... how..."

"I don't know." Cam sighed. "All I know for sure is that the person responsible is dead, and whoever killed Brady made sure that demon couldn't hurt anybody else. That's why the body was burned."

Burned beyond even the SGC's ability to recover and identify, in fact, and the casket they'd just buried was empty—but he wouldn't tell her that.

"How on earth did Sam find out about all this?"

"He and Brady ran into each other the other day. Sam's... well, he's kind of a specialist in these things. He recognized the signs."

"Well, why didn't he exorcise him?"

"Couldn't. It was trapped; the only way to get it out was to kill Brady. And Sam..." Cam paused, wavering between a partial truth and an outright lie before opting for the former. "Sam said Brady didn't deserve that."

Aunt Lucy sniffled and dabbed at her eyes before taking a deep breath and squaring her shoulders. "Well. I'm glad he told you, and I thank you for telling me. Now we won't be lying when we say it wasn't our son that was behind that awful scheme his company had."

Cam gave her a hug and watched as she walked back toward the crowd to greet other mourners. And he wondered, not for the first time, whether he could have done something to save Brady from whatever had happened to him that Christmas. He'd been so busy with the F-302 program, he hadn't even made it home for the holidays; he hadn't even known Brady was struggling until Aunt Lucy came to see him in the hospital after he was shot down in Antarctica. Would things have been different if he'd taken that time off?

And what kind of hero was he if he saved the galaxy several times over but couldn't even save his own cousin?

"It doesn't work like that in this reality," said a voice behind him, making him jump and reach for a gun that wasn't there. He turned to see Gabriel regarding him soberly.

"Don't do that," said Cam, glad he hadn't shot the so-called angel by mistake.

"I'm serious, Cameron. Sam told you the truth; Brady's only mistake, if you could call it that, was being Sam's friend. Azazel wanted Sam forced back into hunting, so if his henchman hadn't been able to snare Brady, he would have possessed somebody else with the same result. The only thing that would have kept Brady safe was an anti-possession charm or a tattoo like the Winchesters have—and considering how long it took _them_ to work out the tattoo idea, I don't think anyone in your family would have been on the lookout for anything of the kind."

Cam sighed. "No, we wouldn't. But I loved that kid, Gabriel. He was one of my favorite cousins. And now, it feels like... like..."

"The end of the world. Because it is, if Sam fouls things up in Detroit."

Cam frowned. "Detroit?"

"Next Wednesday, the boys try to throw my brother back in his box."

"How?"

"Sorry. Not even the President has that kind of clearance."

"Does Gen. O'Neill know?"

"Only that much. No more. Col. Carter's planning to give them some technical help."

"What else can we do?"

Gabriel looked him in the eye, said "Pray" flatly, and vanished, leaving Cameron Mitchell, a man who'd faced down what he'd thought were the worst monsters in four galaxies and lived, thoroughly unnerved.

_To Be Continued in  
__Tok'ra Apocalypse Part 3:  
__For Love Is Strong as Death_


End file.
